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DICK AND LARRY 


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Eight straight times he carried it toward Rockford’s goal 

[Page 40 


DICK AND LARRY 

FRESHMEN 


BY 

FRANCIS LYNDE 

n 

Author of THE DONOVAN CHANCE 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

GEORGE AVISON 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

1922 



Copyright, 1922, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


i/ 


Copyright, 1922, by BOYS’ LIFE 


Printed in the United State* of America 



OCT -7 1922 



V 

©C1&686171 - 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Bridge Scrap i 

II. The Offish Worm 22 

III. The Lame Dogs 43 

IV. Dick’s Drop-Out 62 

V. The Red-Wagon Scholarship .... 78 

VI. A New Room-mate 85 

VII. In Which Dick Mixes It 98 

VIII. How Larry Changed His Mind .... 108 

IX. In Time of Flood 114 

X. At the Sign of the Samovar .... 127 

XI. In Which Larry has a Headache ... 142 

XII. Friends in Need 157 

XIII. The Green Cap Bonfire 171 

XIV. “Westward Ho!” 186 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


Eight straight times he carried it toward Rockford’s goal 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 


The Sophomore front line was buckling for the second time . 18 

“Will you peel your coat ?” 58 

Dazed and bewildered, he sat up and tried to make out where 

he was 152 







DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


I 

THE BRIDGE SCRAP 

HEY were not twins ; they were not brothers or even 
relatives. For that matter, at the moment when their 
train was clattering over the last few miles of the long 
journey from the far- western home-land to the college 
town where they expected to spend the next four years, 
the joint name by which they were to be known at the 
take-off had not yet been coined. But, as everybody 
knows, there is no accounting for college nicknames. 
They are handed you right off the bat, and that’s all there 
is to it. 

To make the “twin” thing still more of a joke, they 
didn’t look much more alike than Little Lord Fauntleroy 
and Huck Finn. About the only feature they had in com- 
mon was a rich stain of brown sunburn, acquired in a 
summer of railroad building in the Timanyoni Mountains 
of western Colorado. Dick Maxwell, son of the general 
manager of the Nevada Short Line, was possibly twenty 
pounds the lighter of the two, and he had the fine-lined 
face and easy manner of a fellow who has never had to 
think of how his clothes fitted, or what to do with his 
hands ; while Larry Donovan — but Larry deserves a para- 
graph to himself. 


1 


2 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


He had the window seat in the Pullman section, and 
was staring out at the rather monotonous Middle-Western 
farmstead landscape hurtling past with that sort of half- 
shy look in his good, wide-set eyes which is the first symp- 
tom of homesickness. The big- framed, curly-headed fel- 
low, who had been Dick's partner on the summer job, was 
the son of an ex-locomotive engineer on the Short Line, 
and he owed his college chance partly to the good work he 
had done on the railroad-building job, and partly to the 
generosity of Dick's father. In a grim, workmanlike 
way, he was determined to make the utmost of the chance ; 
but that fact didn’t say anything whatever to the other 
fact that this was his first long-distance jump from the 
home circle. 

“Why the wan look to starboard, Larry?" Dick asked 
with the grin which, on his face, was never more than a 
good-natured, quizzical smile. “Thinking about the little 
old home shack back in Brewster, and how far away it 
has gone?" 

Larry turned slow eyes upon his companion. 

“Don't see how you can take it so easy," he grumbled 
back ; and then, after a moment’s thought : “Maybe I can, 
too. You’re used to being away from home and mixing 
and mingling with people. I'm not." 

Dick smiled again. 

“Not getting scared out already, are you?" 

“No; it isn’t scare; it’s — well, I don’t know just what 
you’d call it. But I’d give a lot if we were settled down, 
and I knew what to-morrow’s job was going to be, and 
was boning for it out of a book." 

Dick turned short upon the wisher. 

“See here, Larry," he said; “don’t you go starting in 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


3 


at Old Sheddon on the wrong slant. You did it in Brew- 
ster High — you know you did; never came out to class 
doings, or anything. I remember you told me once that 
the fellows and girls didn’t need a 'greasy mechanic’ to 
fill out the list. Dad says there’s a lot more to college 
than just sticking your nose in a book, and I believe it. 
You’re going to miss it by a long mile if you do the turtle- 
in-a-shell act.” 

AVhat Larry Donovan might have replied to this little 
lecture on turtles and their habits was forestalled by a 
panorama of suburban homes flitting past the car win- 
dows, a grinding of the brakes, the rumbling of the train 
across a bridge, and the long jump was fully taken. 

Being strangers from afar, the two Freshmen did not 
expect to be met at the station, and they were not. But 
Dick knew what to do and where to go. 

"A 'Sheddon’ street-car is what we want, and there’s 
one coming, right now,” he said; then: "Hoo-e-e-e! 
Look at the green caps on it. I thought we’d be the only 
early birds, but it seems we’re not.” 

They didn’t get seats in the small trolley car, because 
the seats were all packed and jammed, and so was the 
aisle; but they crowded in, some way. While they were 
stowing their grips, a thick-bodied fellow, with a wide 
mouth and a voice like that of a megaphoning yell leader, 
asked Dick where they were from. 

"Brewster,” said Dick, as if the name of the small 
home city were enough to identify it anywhere. 

"And where in the cat’s name is Brewster?” boomed 
the big voice. 

"I’ll tell you — strictly in confidence,” Dick replied, 
wrinkling his nose. "It’s in Timanyoni Park.” 


4 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Right then and there the nickname was born. 

‘‘Ho, fellows I” roared the megaphonic chap, command- 
ing the instant attention of the packed carful, “we’ve got 
’em, right here; the only original stem-winding, stem- 
setting doodle-bugs from the wild and woozy — the Tim- 
anyoni Twins !” 

Dick laughed with the rest of the carful, and Larry felt 
himself blushing a dark, dark red under his masking coat 
of sunburn — which is as good a way as any of telling how 
this sudden thrust into the limelight affected each. Be- 
yond the christening, Dick fell easily into talk with the 
megaphonist — Wally Dixon, by name, and hailing from 
somewhere in Missouri. But Larry was soberly uncom- 
fortable until they left the car to lug their grips down a 
cross street which skirted the Sheddon campus. 

The “Man-o’-War” was the house they were looking 
for, and they found it — a respectable two-storied dwell- 
ing, as little like a ship as might be — on a corner facing 
the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Dick’s father 
had written ahead to engage their room, and it was good, 
motherly Mrs. Grant herself who opened the door for 
them. 

Mrs. Grant proved to be as hospitable as she looked. 
There were to be six fellows in the house, she explained ; 
two Juniors who had been there the year before, and four 
Freshmen. One of the Juniors had arrived, but the 
other and the two additional Freshmen were yet to come. 
Dick and Larry were to make themselves at home, and the 
arrived Junior, a husky-looking chap named Merkle, 
would show them their room. 

Merkle did the showing — to a large, plainly furnished 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


5 


room on the second floor — and took an upperclassman's 
privilege of casting himself into the one easy-chair while 
the newcomers unpacked their grips. 

“Where are you fellows from?” he asked. 

This time Dick did not try to be funny. “Brewster — 
western Colorado,” he replied. 

“Some little jump, I'll say,” Merkle commented. “Ever 
here before?” 

“Nope.” 

“Then you’ll want to know some of the Sheddon tra- 
ditions; every college has 'em. If you know 'em before- 
hand, it's easier.” 

“Shoot,” said Dick; “we're here to learn.” Then, with 
a fine assumption of uninformed innocence : “Where can 
I get one of those sweaters with an 'S’ on it, like the one 
you’re wearing?” 

“That’s the first of the traditions,” returned the big 
Junior, with a little frown; “not to be fresh with your 
elders.” 

Dick apologized handsomely. 

“That was fresh,” he admitted. “I can see that the 
green cap is going to fit me like a tailor-made suit of 
tights. Please forget it, and tell us some of the tradi- 
tions.” 

Merkle briefed them. No smoking on the campus — 
which didn't hit either of the “twins” because as yet they 
didn't smoke anywhere — no cutting of class or college 
celebrations; no backing down when they were asked to 
take part in any of the college activities; no shirking of 
the “try-outs” for the various athletic teams. 

“Lots of other little stunts that you’ll absorb as you 


6 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


come to ’em,” Merkle concluded; adding: “Of course, 
you’ll both be in the bridge scrap. You can’t do much but 
make a loud noise on the side-lines, because you’re not 
beefy enough” — meaning Dick; “but you” — with a nod 
for Larry — “you look fit enough to heave a locomotive 
off the track. Played on your High School eleven, didn’t 
you ?” 

Larry nodded, and Dick explained: “Half-back; he’s 
too modest to tell you so himself. But what about this 
bridge scrap?” 

“It’s the pure quill,” said Merkle. “Dark night ; single- 
span concrete bridge about a mile back in the country. 
Sophomores defend it ; Freshies try to rush it. Two upper 
classes on hand to keep the murder list as low as possible. 
You’ll like it.” 

“What do we get out of it if we win?” Dick demanded. 

“Undying fame — and the right to paint the numerals of 
your class on the portal arch. It’s been eight years since 
a Freshman class did it.” 

Dick nodded. 

“Sounds pretty all right to me.” 

“And how about you, Curlyhead?” Merkle turned to 
Larry. 

At this, the Donovan downrightness came to the fore. 

“I’m not aiming to play horse,” he said, speaking slow- 
ly, as his habit was when he was appealed to. “I came 
here to study.” 

The upperclassman’s frown was portentous, as became 
his dignity. 

“See here, Donovan,” he returned ; “I can tell you one 
thing: you won’t get very far if you begin by knocking 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


7 


the college spirit. You'll not be urged, or even asked, 
personally, to go with your class into the bridge scrap. 
But unless you can flash up a doctor's certificate to show 
that you're physically unfit — well, I wouldn’t want to be 
in your shoes after the fact; that's all." 

“Larry's all right,” said Dick, hastening to make peace. 
“He's just too modest to brag. When does this bloody 
event eventuate ?" 

“Pretty early in the game: fellows don't get down to 
brass tacks in their college work until after it’s come and 
gone. You’ll have all the notice you’ll need. What 
schools do you enter ?" 

“Civil for me; Mechanical for Larry." 

“Good on the Civil end; I'm one of 'em myself," said 
Merkle, extending a ham-like hand. “You’ll like the 
Dean. He’s some Ranahan on field work." Then, heaving 
himself up out of his chair : “There goes Mother Grant's 
little supper tinkle bell. You’ll register in, Wednesday, 
and then you'll have a day or so to shake yourselves into 
place. Sheddon's a good old dump, but if you've been 
brought up by hand, you may find her a little raspy on 
the nerves, as all engineering schools are likely to be. 
But she's fair and square and just. You get about what 
you go out after. Let's jump down and bite a piece o' 

• _ it 

pie. 

With two days to spare before the Registrar's office 
would open, the “twins" had time to look about a bit. 
Finding that they had the freedom of the campus and its 
buildings, they made a round of the different schools, 
“rubber-necking," as Dick put it. 

In addition to being the technical end of a State Uni- 


8 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


versity, Sheddon was — and is — a considerable university 
in itself. The “rubber-neckers” wandered through building 
after building; Agriculture, with its up-to-date farm ma- 
chinery, spotless dairy, and model farm; Chemistry and 
Pure Science, with their splendidly equipped laboratories ; 
Electricity, with wonders to which their High School 
course had barely introduced them; Civil Engineering, 
with its museum of surveying instruments; and Mechani- 
cal, with its laboratory, big lecture-rooms, testing lab., 
foundry, blacksmith-shop, pattern-shop and machine- 
shop complete to the smallest practical detail. 

Larry Donovan warmed up with his first touch of real 
enthusiasm as they were inspecting the shops. He had 
worked in the home railroad shop to earn money for his 
High School course. 

‘This is something like !” he exclaimed. “Let me get 
into my overalls and jumper, and I’ll be right at home 
here. Just look at those lathes — motor-driven and up-to- 
date to the last bit of polish on the face-plates.” 

With his customary ease of fitting himself into whatever 
niche he happened to drop into, Dick made a good many 
acquaintances during those preliminary days, and was 
hail-fellow-well-met with a score and more of his class- 
mates by the time the registration was over and the stu- 
dent body was getting its assignment cards filled out. 

But with Larry it was altogether different. While 
Dick made friends who told him what to do and how to 
do it, Larry plugged along on his own — and made hard 
work of it. Of course, this was strictly his own fault; 
but even at this early date in his college career he was 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


9 


beginning to draw a line which was later to give him no 
end of trouble and heartburnings. 

As well as he knew Dick — and they had been the 
closest of friends in the home High School — he was al- 
ready asking himself if Dick’s ready acceptance by every- 
body wasn’t due to the fact that Dick’s father was general 
manager of a good-sized railroad. Admitting that ac- 
cusation — and he was admitting it almost before he knew; 
it — it was only a step over to the other side of the mis- 
leading equation: if a fellow’s ranking in Sheddon was 
going to be based upon the social or financial prominence 
of his family, what sort of a show did the son of a 
crippled ex-locomotive engineer stand? 

It was after supper on the day when they got their as- 
signments, and the two had gone to their room to “chop 
the first air-hole in the study ice,” as Dick put it, that 
Larry’s attitude got its first public airing, so to speak. 
And some mention of the impending bridge scrap was 
what opened the door. 

“No,” said Larry, frowning, “I’m not in on that, or 
any other side-line foolishness, Dick. As I told Merkle 
that first evening, I’m not here to play horse. My assign- 
ment card is full enough to keep me good and busy, and 
if I can claw through this first semester without flunking 
something, I’ll be lucky.” 

Dick squared himself behind the study table and looked 
his room-mate in the eye. 

“You’re side-stepping, Larry,” he broke out accusingly. 
“It isn’t the work that makes you say that. You know 
perfectly well that you can run rings all around me, with 
your little ‘it’s dogged as does it/ when it comes to the 


10 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


study part. You’ve got some other reason up your sleeve. 
What is it?” 

Larry tried to set the real reason in presentable shape. 
But, after all, it didn’t sound so very good when he 
voiced it. 

“I was a workingman before I came here, and I’m a 
workingman yet.” 

“Granny!” Dick scoffed. “We’re all workingmen — 
or, if we’re not, we’d better be.” 

“You know what I mean,” Larry insisted; adding: 
“I’m not kicking. It’s the way it is out in the world, and 
I suppose there is no reason why it shouldn’t be that way 
in college. You’ve made an armful of friends already, 
while I know maybe half a dozen fellows well enough to 
nod at ’em. Sometimes they nod back, and sometimes 
they don’t.” 

“Fiddle!” — Dick seemed to be carrying an overload of 
derisive ejaculations. “You’ve simply got the bug, Larry ! 
If you let it keep you from being a real Sheddonian — pep, 
college spirit and all — it’ll bust you, world without end.” 

“I can’t help it,” said the workingman glumly. “I 
didn’t make things the way they are made. Here’s a 
sample of it : You’ve met Eggleston — the dandified chap 
that rooms two doors down the street. I happened to butt 
up against him to-day, and he introduced himself and 
asked if I were the son of Mr. Herbert Donovan, the 
big consulting engineer, of St. Louis. When I said No; 
that my father was a locomotive engineer; he froze up 
until you could hear his skin crack.” 

“Bosh!” snorted Dick, trotting out another of the 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


11 


derisives. “If you’re going to let a snob like Harry 
Eggleston set the pace for you — ” 

The interruption was a hoarse cry from the street: 
“Freshmen out! All Freshmen out!” Dick opened the 
window and stuck his head out. 

“What’s broke loose?” he asked. 

“Turn out ! The Sophs are paintin’ one of our fellows 
green down in Adams’s field barn! Turn out!” 

Dick shut the window and went to get his cap. 

“You’re coming, aren’t you, Larry?” he said; adding: 
“This is a class job, you know.” 

Larry shook his head. 

“Might as well begin in one place as another, Dick: 
I’m not in on the rah-rah stuff.” 

Dick Maxwell’s temper was easy-going, but about once 
in a blue moon it got away from him. 

“That’s yellow, and you know it !” he flamed out ; and 
with that he was gone. But he had scarcely reached the 
sidewalk before Larry was at his elbow. 

“I can’t stand for that — from you, Dick,” was all the 
explanation that was offered; and, of course, Dick was 
instantly penitent. 

“I’m a liar!” he blurted out contritely. “Nobody 
knows better than I do that there isn’t a single yellow drop 
of blood in you, Larry. There goes a bunch of our fel- 
lows now — let’s run.” 

The hazing episode proved to be merely an incident. 
Enough Freshmen were rallied to rush the field barn in 
Adams’s back forty; the artistic Sophomores were scat- 
tered; and the victim, who proved to be the big, husky 
“Aggie,” Welborn, who roomed at Mrs. Grant’s, was 


12 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


rescued. Of course, Welborn was a sad sight. The art- 
ists had stripped him and he was well daubed with green 
paint. Nevertheless, he was cheerfully triumphant. “I 
got five of ’em, b’jing! before they got me,’’ he gloated, 
with a grin that the green paint made peculiarly hideous. 
“Whadda you reckon’d take it off?” 

‘‘Turpentine,” suggested somebody in the mob of res- 
cuers; and two of the light-footed ones ran for a drug 
store. 

With the worst of the paint removed, Larry and Dick 
took Welborn home, where they commandeered the bath- 
room and worked over him until he was well-nigh 
blistered but clean. 

“Gosh! talk about Turkish baths!” gurgled the big 
victim, as they were sousing him for the final time in the 
tub of hot soap-suds, “I’ll say this beats ’em a mile high ! 
Wait till we got those Soffies at the bridge ! I’m goin’ to 
take a stick along and notch it every time I put one of ’em 
to sleep.” 

“Well?” said Dick to Larry, after they had tucked the 
cheerful victim into his bed, and were once more in their 
own room, “changed your mind any?” 

“Not a minute’s worth!” was the gruff reply. “It’s all 
tom-foolishness, and I don’t want any of it in mine.” 

“But you’ll turn out for the bridge scrap, won’t you ? — 
for the honor of the class?” 

“Not so you could notice it,” Larry refused; and with 
that he stuck his face into a book. 

For some days the “shaking-down” process which 
every college has to go through at the beginning of the 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


13 


scholastic year went on — with small satisfaction to any 
sober-minded member of the faculty, or to fellows who, 
like Larry Donovan, were not yet imbued with that 
elusive thing called “college spirit.” Hazings, some of 
them mild, and some not so mild, went on nightly. 
Freshmen, unwarily out after dark in numbers too small 
for defense, were paddled, painted, and made to do stunts 
ridiculous, and sometimes rather harrowing. 

After the Welborn incident, Larry refused to pay any 
heed to the nightly call of “Freshmen out” and Dick 
forbore to urge him. But at last a night came when the 
call — unheeded when it was raised from the sidewalk — 
was hurled in at short range by Welborn himself. He 
found Larry alone, poring over his mathematics, as was 
his usual custom. 

“Hey! what the dickens are you hived up here for, 
when the Soffies are out in force and murderin’ us?” he 
roared. “You’d sit here with your nose in a book while 
they’ve got your side-partner, Dick Maxwell, half naked 
and chased up a tree back of the athletic field? You 
haven’t any red blood in you, Donovan ; that’s what’s the 
matter with you !” 

Larry jumped up so suddenly that his chair went over 
with a crash. “Show me !” was all he said; and a minute 
later he was racing at Welborn’s heels, down the street and 
across an open lot to where half a dozen yelling Sopho- 
mores were doing a scalp dance around a big black-walnut 
tree. In the higher branches of the tree to which they 
had driven him by throwing clods at him a slender figure 
in a close-fitting suit of underwear was picked out by a 


14 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


light of a small bonfire. And the autumn night was cold. 

Welborn spoke for the first time as he and Larry were 
hurling themselves over the fence. “B-better get some 
more of the fe-fellows !” he gasped. “There are too 
many of ’m for just us two!” But Larry acted as if he 
hadn’t heard. “Come on!” he said; and, two to six, 
they went in. 

It was a warm little tussle for a few minutes, with most 
of the rules eliminated. Like Larry, Welborn had played 
foot-ball ; and, again like Larry, he had the weight. Buck- 
ing the dancing ring as one man, they broke the line ; and 
another tackling rush dissipated it. 

Back in their room, Larry once more planted himself 
before his book, but as he opened it, he said to Dick, 
without looking up: “You may count me in on that 
bridge business, if you like. I don’t ‘savvy’ that sort of 
thing, as you know ; but those fellows need a lesson — and 
they’re going to get it. No; don’t make any mistake,” he 
went on, as Dick was about to offer congratulations. “I 
haven’t any ‘class spirit’ or ‘college spirit,’ or whatever you 
call it. But when they hit you, they hit me; that’s all.” 

The night of the bridge scrap — which, by Sheddon tra- 
dition, was to end all hazing — came in due course; 
a night a bit cloudy, and, by consequence, as dark as 
Erebus. Quite early in the evening the class began to 
gather, and the cries of “Freshmen out!” “All Sopho- 
mores out !” began to be lifted in the college suburb streets 
very shortly after supper. 

True to his own traditions, Larry sat down at the study 
table and boned his Math, for the next day, resolutely 
shutting his ears to Dick’s agonized protests to the effect 
that all the fun would be over before they could get in on 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


15 


it. It was half-past eight before the boner shut his book 
and announced his readiness. But while he was getting 
into his oldest clothes and overalls, he once more defined 
his position. 

“Don’t you get ‘hope up’ about me, Dick. I’m going 
in on this because it seems to be a job that has to be done 
before the Soffies will mind their own business and let us 
alone. That’s all there is to it, so far as I’m concerned.” 

“Maybe you’ll have another angle on it before we get 
through,” was all that Dick said in reply; and they set 
out. 

As Dick had predicted, they were a little late ; when they 
reached the streets they found them deserted. But they 
knew the location of the bridge, a mile back of the cam- 
pus ; and the mile was covered at a dog-trot. 

Though they had been tardy for the assembling, they 
were in time for everything else. While the night was 
dark, the battlefield was luridly illuminated by flaring 
gasoline torches. The bridge was a modern concrete struc- 
ture of a single long span over the small river; broad, and 
with footways at the sides protected by parapets breast- 
high. At either end was an ornamental portal arch, and 
it was upon this that the winning class was permitted to 
paint its year numerals. 

When Larry and Dick arrived upon the scene, the 
Sophomores had taken possession of the bridge, and the 
Freshmen were massed in the road. Upperclassmen — 
Seniors for the Sophomores and Juniors for the Fresh- 
men — we re “frisking” the combatants for weapons. No 
fellow with good red blood in him would go into such 
a conflict armed ; but in a bunch of six or eight hundred 


16 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


undergraduates there are always a few “yellows,” and 
they had to be searched. 

As the Juniors in pairs searched the green caps, others 
followed with strips of white cloth to be worn on the arm 
as a distinguishing mark by the attackers. “Fair play!” 
was the oft-repeated caution of the upperclassmen; and 
dire punishment was promised to the fellows who should 
break this tradition. 

Dick plunged into the thick of things as soon as he had 
been searched and marked ; but Larry stood aside, grimly 
sizing up the situation. The first thing he remarked was 
the time-immemorial handicap of Freshman classes, 
namely, the lack of leadership which is the natural conse- 
quence in a body of fellows getting together for their first 
united effort. Wally Dixon, the big-voiced young Me- 
chanical who had given Larry and Dick their joint nick- 
name on the day of their arrival, was commanding and 
shouting and trying to bring some sort of order out of 
the chaos ; but he was not making much headway. 

The searching and marking finished, the upperclassmen 
laid down the iron-clad rules of the game. Slugging was 
prohibited, but anything less than a knock-out went. 
Prisoners could be taken by either side, but they had the 
privilege of escaping and rejoining their own side if they 
could. Time would not be called until one side or the 
other was clearly victorious. 

When all was ready, the Freshmen made their first 
charge, with Dixon trying to get team play by forming his 
men into a flying wedge. Larry, from the half-back posi- 
tion into which he had mechanically dropped, saw at once 
that it was going to fail. The Sophomores were massed 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


17 


solidly all the way across the bridge, and the loosely- 
formed wedge doubled up like a handful of sand and went 
to pieces when it struck the obstacle. 

For a shouting, ear-splitting five minutes there was a 
hilarious free-for-all, in which a dozen or more of the at- 
tackers were taken prisoner and shoved to the rear under 
guard. Then the defenders charged in their turn — good, 
old-fashioned mass play, this was — and drove the disor- 
ganized mob of Freshies off the bridge and a hundred 
yards or so up the road. 

In the little lull which followed the return of the Sopho- 
mores to their stronghold, there was dazed confusion in 
the ranks of the defeated, with Dixon trying in vain to 
rally them into fighting shape again. Into the midst of 
things Dick Maxwell hurled himself like a human bomb- 
shell. 

“Fellows !” he yelled, “what we’re needing is a leader ! 
Dixie, here, is doing his best, but it isn’t good enough. 
Isn’t that so, Wally?” — appealing to the big voice. 

“You said a whole mouthful,” Dixon admitted, with 
splendid class spirit. “I’m only pinch-hittin’ for the right 
man. Who is he, Maxie?” 

“I’ve got him right here!” Dick shouted, dragging 
Larry forcibly into the inner circle. “Here’s an old 
codger that’s handled grown men on a railroad job! 
Climb in, Larry, and tell us what to do !” 

Of course, Larry would have backed straight out if he 
had been allowed to. But even at this early period a lot 
of the men knew Dickie Maxwell, and were perfectly will- 
ing to take his word. “Donovan! Donovan! What’s 
the matter with Donovan? There’s nothing the matter 


18 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


with Donovan! He’s all right, you BET!” the shout 
went up ; and Larry found himself elected. 

“If you will have it that way,” he yielded gruffly. 
“What I don’t know about such foolishness as this would 
fill a rain-water hogshead. But if the job’s got to be done, 
we’ll do it: just get that rubbed into your hides — every 
last one of you. We’re going to do it !” 

“Bully for the Timanyoni Twin ! Tell us how !” yelled 
the mob. 

“Listen, then: we can’t buck that line solid, and get 
anywhere. Those fellows have been together long enough 
to know team play, and we haven’t. I want twenty men 
who can swim, and who aren’t afraid of getting wet. 
Volunteers come over to this side of the road. You other 
fellows mass across so they can’t see what we’re doing.” 

He had his twenty in a half-second — and forty more 
on top of them. Rapidly he made his selection, with 
Wally Dixon for a captain. Not knowing more than a 
handful of the men, individually, he picked chiefly for size. 
Since his plan bulked large on the side of secrecy, he took 
the twenty apart and gave them their instructions. After 
which, they vanished in the darkness — not in the direc- 
tion of the bridge. 

“Now for a little drill work !” Larry called out, going 
back to the army proper. “Let me show you what a fly- 
ing wedge really ought to be,” and for as much as fifteen 
minutes he kept them forming and re-forming in the road, 
the only shirker being Dickie Maxwell, who stood aside 
with his eyes fixed upon a certain point in the woods back- 
grounding the farther end of the bridge. And in the 
meantime, most naturally, the thus-far-victorious Sopho- 


tmm 



The Sophomore front line was buckling for the second time 

















( 















% 










/ 

























































































* 










THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


19 


mores were hurling all sorts of epithets across the dead- 
line, singing and shouting like the pack of young bar- 
barians which, for the moment, they were. 

Larry was forming his charging wedge for about the 
twentieth time when Dick, straining his eyes, saw a tiny 
match-light flare, lasting no longer than an eye-wink, on 
the farther bank of the river a few yards above the bridge 
approach. Instantly he darted across to Larry. “Six — 
fourteen — five I” he yelled, giving the old football signal ; 
and Larry leaped to his place at the cutting edge of the 
wedge. “This time we GO !” he bellowed : “Now, then 
— for all you’re worth, and hang on till the last man of 
you is dead!” 

Once more the defenders of the bridge met the charge 
gamely. Their front line bent, buckled, straightened it- 
self again, and flying detachments from either flank tried 
to cut the splitting point of the wedge off from the tre- 
mendous shoving force behind it. Larry, head down like 
that of a butting ram, and his racking elbows boring a 
path straight into the crowding mass, seemed to bear a 
charmed life. Dragging hands clawed at him, fists beat 
upon him. Once a slugger, meanly taking advantage of 
the turmoil, kneed him in the stomach; but still he kept 
his feet and held on. 

It was only a matter of minutes. While the Sophomore 
front line was buckling for the second time a wild yell 
went up from their rear. The small guard they had left 
to hold the northern end of the bridge had given way at 
the charge of the twenty huskies Larry had sent to swim 
the river, and in another half-minute the yearly class 
struggle had passed into history. Larry’s ruse had been 


20 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


the simplest of tricks, but even a simple trap works if it 
has never been tried before. Caught between two fires, 
the bridge defenders broke in confusion, and after that, it 
was every man for himself and a get-away. 

Of course, Larry had his reward — and Dick, too, for 
that matter. For an uproarious half-hour the victorious 
Freshmen marched back and forth over the bridge, carry- 
ing the 4 ‘twins’’ shoulder-high and shouting themselves 
hoarse for Donovan and Maxwell, the class, Old Sheddon, 
and the epoch-marking scrap which would put Freshmen 
numerals on the portal arch for the first time in eight 
years. 

But after it was all over; after the shouting, singing 
mob had made its way back to the college suburb and dis- 
persed, and Dick, hero-worshipping in proper fashion by 
applying the contents of Mother Grant’s arnica bottle to 
the handsome array of bruises Larry had acquired in the 
battle, ventured to add a little adulation of his own to the 
class leader’s triumph, Larry cut him off morosely. 

“None of that from you, Dick!” he growled. “I know 
just how much and how little all this shouting and yelling 
is worth, and so do you. To-morrow morning nine- 
tenths of those fellows won’t know me when they meet 
me on the campus. For just about that percentage of them 
I’ll drop back and be just what I am — a workingman and 
the son of a workingman. They wanted a hard-hitter to- 
night, and I happened to be it. But that’s all there is to it. 
No more rah-rah stuff for me.” 

“But you can’t — you simply can't go through college 
with that sort of a slant on things!” Dick protested, al- 
most tearfully. “It isn’t human! You’re simply batty 


THE BRIDGE SCRAP 


21 


on that 'workingman’ stunt. Why, those fellows you 
captained to-night will black your shoes — do anything on 
top of earth for you, if you’ll only let ’em !” 

But “letting them” was the hitch that Larry Donovan, 
in the very beginning of his college career, was allowing 
the stubborn part of his own character to knot around 
him. There is no variety of pride quite so unreasoning 
as poverty-pride ; and when Larry tumbled into bed a little 
later, it was with the fixed idea that he was going to be 
in college without being of it ; that he would hoe his own 
row and let others do the same; a determination which, 
farther along, was to lead to — but of that more in its 
proper place. 


II 


THE OFFISH WORM 

<4 OAY, Maxie; what the di — hinkle is the matter with 
^ that red-headed room-mate of yours, I’d like to 
know?” 

It was the beginning of the college year, and Old Shed- 
don was settling into its stride. On the campus, between 
classes, two first-year men were heading for their rooms 
and a study period. Wally Dixon, the bigger of the two, 
was the one who asked the disgusted question about 
Larry Donovan. 

“Larry’s a good old scout,” said Dick Maxwell, dodging 
a small problem that he himself was unable to answer. 
“He’s a regular fellow, all right, when you come to know 
him.” 

“Know him?” roared Dixon; “I’d like for you to tell 
me how anybody ever gets to know him! Look at the 
way he acted after you, or somebody, got him out for the 
class scrap at the bridge. He was a pink winner that 
night, with the neat little Indian-fighter trick that he 
pulled, and everybody on the job knew it. But when 
some of us went to him the next day to find out which 
of the class offices he’d like to have handed him, he bluffed 
us cold!” 

“Don’t you go and lay that up against him,” Dick 
urged. “It’s — it’s just his way, you know.” 

“Well, if anybody should ask me often enough, I’d say 
22 


THE OFFISH WORM 


23 


it’s a mighty queer way. Acts as if he had a grouch 
against the world.” 

Dickie Maxwell, loyalest of chums, hardly knew what 
to say. Dixon was the son of a wealthy Kansas City 
packer, and Dick felt that it would be next to impossible 
to make him understand Larry's attitude. For that mat- 
ter, he, Dick, couldn’t understand it himself. Beginning 
with workmanlike contempt for what he called the “boys’- 
play” side of college life, Larry’s grouch, or indifference, 
or whatever it was, was developing into something a good 
bit like antagonism toward everything but the daily study 
grind, and what he could get out of that. 

‘Til say he’s heading in to be a worm,” Dixon went 
on ; “worm” being Sheddon slang for a fellow who scamps 
the college “activities” and lives and moves and has his 
being in the classrooms and study periods. “He’s ripping 
material for the athletic squad, and if he had even a whiff 
of college spirit he’d be showing up in the try-outs. You 
ought to labor with him, Maxie ; he’s needing it.” 

The two parted at the campus gate, and when Dick 
reached his room at Mrs. Grant’s, he found Larry scowl- 
ing over a problem in his trigonometry. 

“Chuck the grind and talk to me a few minutes,” was 
Dick’s greeting as he came in. Then : “You’re cutting all 
the athletic try-outs, Larry. What for ?” 

Larry’s frown deepened. “I don’t see why I can’t 
make you understand,” he broke out half impatiently. 
“You, and most of the other fellows, I’d say, are here 
mostly to have a good time — or that’s the way it looks to 
me. I'm not. I’m here on borrowed money — no, hold 
on,” he protested, when Dick would have interrupted, “I 


24 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


know your father doesn’t look at it that way, but I do. 
And because it is borrowed money, I want to get the 
worth of it.” 

“Well,” Dick retorted, “that’s just what I’m scrapping 
about. You won’t get the worth of it if you go on cut- 
ting out a good half of what college ought to mean to a 
fellow. I’ll bet you fairly ache to go on the field every 
time the bunch takes a try-out.” 

“If I do, I take it out in aching,” — glumly. 

It was the same old thing. As the son of a working- 
man, Larry, as we have seen, had early drawn a line upon 
the off side of which he had taken his stand stubbornly. 
College, as it appeared to him, was a place where rich 
men’s sons came to study as little as possible, and where 
a workingman was admitted only upon sufferance, as you 
might say. 

Now when a fellow goes about with a chip on his 
shoulder there are plenty of people who will oblige him 
by knocking it off. Larry had already had kindnesses 
not a few shown him, and even hilarious adulation when 
— dragged into it bodily by Dick — he had taken part in 
the class “scrap,” and had led the green-caps to the first 
Freshman victory won in eight years. But, on the other 
hand, a few snobbish fellows had “shown him his place,” 
as he put it, and it is human nature to see the thing you 
are looking for, and to miss the things you’ve already 
made up your mind don’t exist. 

“I don’t think you’re doing yourself, or Old Sheddon, 
fair justice,” Dick said at length. “If you were thick- 
headed and had to bone hard to keep up, it would be dif- 
ferent. But you’re not — and you don’t.” 


THE OFFISH WORM 


25 


“Listen,” said Larry; “those fellows in the athletic 
bunch are out after ‘material/ but that is just as far as it 
goes, Dick. They’d take me on as a sort of promising 
chunk of bone and muscle — and that’s all. I’m not in 
their class.” 

Dick flapped his hands in despair. 

“You’re the limit, Larry ! That ‘class’ notion of yours, 
in free-for-all America, is simply bunk !” 

“Is it?” Larry queried sharply. “I can prove what I 
say. Look at little Purdick — waiting on table in Hassler’s 
restaurant to earn his way : does anybody ask him to get 
in on any of the try-outs? Not so you could notice it. 
Look at Jungman, tending furnaces and wheelbarrowing 
ashes: Saturday, when some of the fellows were going 
for a hike, one of ’em said: ‘Let’s make Jungman take 
time off and go with us.’ Were there any frantic shouts 
of approval? Not on your life. Instead, Banker Wald- 
rich said, ‘Oh, nit ! he isn’t our sort/ ” 

Again Dick made the gesture of despair. 

“I guess you’re hopeless!” he gave up; and with that 
he went to get his own book. 

Though he said this — meaning it at the moment — Dick 
didn’t let up on the athletic urgencies; and faithfully, in 
season and out of season, he labored with Larry. As 
sometimes happens, even in an engineering college, a 
Freshman class had entered with rather scanty material 
in it for the class teams. And, since the ’Varsity teams 
have to grow up out of incoming material, the athletic 
“scouts” were digging hard for Freshman candidates. 
Unhappily, however, the fellows who approached Larry 


26 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


always seemed to rub him the wrong way of the grain; 
or he thought they did, which amounted to the same thing. 

After all, it was less Dick's urgings than a word spoken 
by Mr. Waddell, the pattern-shop instructor, that turned 
the tide. It was on an afternoon while the try-outs were 
still going on, and Larry was doing a little extra work in 
the shop. Passing through, the instructor stopped at 
Larry’s lathe, and there was a little talk turning upon 
Larry’s absence from the athletic field when everybody 
else was there. 

Much to Larry’s surprise, the instructor took sides with 
Dick and the other urgers : it was a student’s duty to up- 
hold, not only the honor of his college in class work, but 
in the “activities” as well. Larry thought it all over 
soberly, and that evening made a large and generous con- 
cession to Dick. 

“This athletic business,” he began, without preface; 
“I’ve about made up my mind to try out for the foot- 
ball squad.” 

The sudden shift nearly knocked Dick speechless, but 
he caught his breath and pounded the shifter on the back. 

“That’s the right old stuff!” he exulted; “Gee-gosh! 
but you make me glad all around the block !” 

“Hold up,” Larry amended; “I don’t want any more 
credit than belongs to me. I’m going in because I guess 
I owe it to Old Sheddon. But I’m not kidding myself 
any, whatever. If I get in and play a good game, the 
bleachers’ll give me the glad hand. But off the field I’ll 
still be Larry Donovan, mechanic, and the son of a me- 
chanic.” 

“Confound your picture r said Dick, half laughing and 


THE OFFISH WORM 


27 


half provoked, “you ought to have a licking, and if I 
were big enough I’d give you one ! Why, you poor fish, 
don’t you know that your good, sane, ‘workingman’ an- 
cestry is the thing you ought to be most thankful for? It 
is the foundation upon which the real America is built!” 

Larry grunted and looked up suspiciously. 

“Where’d you get all that flowery stuff ?” he demanded. 

“I read it in a book,” Dick confessed brazenly. “Just 
the same, it’s so.” 

The next afternoon Larry reported to Brock, the head 
coach, at the gymnasium, offering himself for the try- 
outs. 

“What have you done?” snapped the square-faced, 
broad-shouldered man-picker who was filling the Sheddon 
teams. 

“Little High School baseball and foot-ball.” 

“What place in foot-ball?” 

“End one year; right half the next two.” 

The shrewd gray eyes of the coach swept him up and 
down. 

“H’m; you were the bridge-scrap leader, weren’t you? 
Come in here and strip and let’s have a look at you.” 

Larry took his “physical” without a flaw ; heart action 
perfectly normal, weight within a pound and three ounces 
of what his age and height called for, chest expansion 
well above normal. In addition, his summer’s work on 
the railroad-building job in the Colorado mountains had 
made him as hard as nails. 

“You’ll do,” said the coach, and sent him to the field. 

If he had been twice as finical as he was, he couldn’t 
have found any fault with his reception. The memorable 


28 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


bridge scrap was still fresh in mind, and his subsequent 
refusal to turn out for athletics seemed to be forgotten on 
the spot. Naturally, he was cast at once for Freshman 
foot-ball; and after a hard-working hour in the field he 
went to the showers with his blood dancing and with the 
feeling that perhaps, after all, he had been overhasty in 
jumping to the conclusion that his family’s station in life 
had anything to do with the way the fellows were regard- 
ing him. 

But the good effect of this first little dip into the bigger 
pool was all spoiled while he was dressing in the locker- 
room. The steel lockers were arranged in double rows, 
with dressing alleys between ; and in the next row two of 
his fellow classmen, McKnight and Rogers, out of sight 
but, unhappily, not out of hearing, were discussing him. 

‘Well, the offish worm turned out, at last, didn’t he?” 
McKnight was saying. “That’s Dickie Maxwell’s doing, 
I’ll bet. Don’t see howj Maxwell can room with a fellow 
like him.” 

“He may be a grouch, but he certainly can play ‘feet- 
ball,’ ” Rogers replied. “I’d hate to have him on a team 
against me.” 

“He’s the rough stuff” — this was McKnight again — 
“but that’s about what you’d expect. They say his dad’s 
a section-man, or something, on a railroad. Queer how 
such fellows break in.” 

“Oh, cut that !” said the other voice, in a tone of marked 
disapproval. “Can’t you ever forget that you were born 
with gold fillings in your teeth, Knighty ? My father was 
a house carpenter, if it comes to that.” 

“But he didn’t stay a house carpenter,” was the quick 


THE OFFISH WORM 


29 


retort. “Just now he’s the head of the biggest contract- 
ing firm in the State of Iowa.” 

‘‘That doesn’t cut any ice, Knighty. You’ve got to 
take a fellow for what he is; not for what his father is 
or was.” 

“That is exactly what I’m doing with the ‘worm.’ Don- 
ovan may be all right on the team, but I’d hate to see my- 
self rooming with him.” 

Larry was fully dressed by now, and he didn’t wait to 
hear any more. And it was only human nature again that 
made him remember bitterly what McKnight had said, 
and forget the sensible and ameliorating Rogers’ replies. 

“Things break all right for you this afternoon?” Dick 
asked that evening after he and Larry were hived in their 
room. 

“Oh, good enough, I guess,” was the morose reply. 

“Coachie didn’t turn you down, I don’t think !” 
chucked the class recruiter. “Foot-ball squad, of course?” 

“Freshman team,” said Larry, without looking up. 

“Good ! You’ll get inoculated with the real, old, simon- 
pure college spirit, after a bit, Larry.” 

“Don’t you believe it for one single minute!” Larry 
flamed out hotly, in the remembrance of his wrongs. “I’m 
in, and I’ll stay in because I’m not a quitter. But I 
haven’t changed my mind a single atom!” And he re- 
peated, for Dick’s benefit, the talk he had overheard in the 
locker-room ; or rather, to be strictly accurate, he repeated 
McKnight’s part of it. 

“You see, it’s just as I’ve been telling you,” he wound 
up in a burst of contemptuous passion. “They’re glad 
enough to use me as a promising bunch of bone and mus- 


30 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


cle, and that’s all. I’ll stick, for the sake of what Shed- 
don’s going to give me. But when it’s over, I’ll still be 
fighting on my side of the fence — which isn’t Ollie Mc- 
Knight’s side by a thousand miles !” 

True to his determination, Larry “stuck,” and after a 
few days of practice the Freshman team found that it 
had acquired a prize. Larry played with the same grim 
resolution that he put into his classroom work. Playing 
first at end, he was presently given his old High School 
position at half-back. For this position he was well quali- 
fied, having weight enough to buck the opposing line, 
combined with the speed necessary to circle the ends and 
slip through tackle. 

It was in one of the preliminary practice games with 
the ’Varsity that he made his mark. As usually happens, 
the big fellows ran away with everything in sight, but 
after the game, just as Larry was leaving the locker- 
room, Brock, the head coach, stopped him. 

“I’ve been watching your play this afternoon, Dono- 
van,” he said brusquely. “You have the makings of a 
good half-back in you. How do you stand in your class- 
room work?” 

“All right, so far, I guess,” Larry replied. 

“We begin playing the schedule next week,” Brock 
went on. “How would you like to go along as a sub? 
Of course, I couldn’t put you in the Conference games, 
but there’ll be others.” 

You’d have to be a college Freshman yourself to know 
how this hit Larry. It is only about once in an elephant’s 
age that a raw Freshie is ever singled out as even a 
remotely possible substitute on the big team. But right 


THE OFFISH WORM 


31 


there the growing bitterness got in its work. Once more 
he was being taken up for his brawn, and maybe a little 
for his brain, but not for anything else. 

“I guess I’m not available,” he said, and it came out 
a lot more bluntly than he had meant to make it. 

“All right,” returned the coach. “It’s up to you, of 
course.” And that ended it. 

After this little talk with Brock, Larry played all the 
harder in the practice games — which was the way he was 
built. Back in the old life, which now seemed so far 
away, he had wiped engines in a locomotive roundhouse ; 
and because it was a disagreeable, dirty job, he always 
did it just a little more than thoroughly. Here was an- 
other engine-wiping job, he told himself; and, since he 
had undertaken it, he would go through with it. 

Matters and things ran along this way until the foot- 
ball season was well started. There were class games 
on the home field, in one of which the Freshmen, clinching 
their success in the bridge scrap, literally wiped the earth 
with the Sophomores in a score of 47 to nothing, and 
public acclaim — what there was of it — gave the credit, 
or a good share of it, to a certain red-headed, big-boned 
half-back, whom nothing seemed to be able to stop. 

Meanwhile the ’Varsity was playing around the circle, 
and having hard luck. Not once, as yet, had there been 
occasion to call out the “snake dance” and “night-shirt 
parade” with which Sheddon victories were celebrated. 
Through all this, Larry seemed to be the only member of 
the student body who remained unmoved. Day after day 
he plugged along, religiously giving his afternoons when 
his team was called out ; but that was all. 


32 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Larry, you’re a fright — simply a fright!” Dick 
stormed, one evening when the news had come of another 
defeat for the “Blacksmiths.” “How you can go on, 
just as if nothing was happening, when ” 

“Might say nothing is happening — to me,” put in the 
offish one grumpily. 

“Of course it’s happening to you!” Dick yelped. 
“Aren’t you a part of Old Sheddon, I’d like to know? 
Haven’t you any heart at all ?” 

Larry jumped up and tramped across to the window 
which, in daylight, looked out upon Engineering Lab., 
and gave a cornerwise glimpse at the athletic field. When 
he turned back to face Dick his lip was shaking. 

“It does get me, Dick! I’ve fought it — fought it just 
as hard as I could. I know the fellows don’t like me, 
and a lot of ’em are calling me a ‘worm.’ Just the same, 
it’s breaking my heart to see Sheddon losing this way! 

I ” and he turned to the window again, quickly, this 

time, as if to hide something that he was ashamed to let 
Dick see. 

In a second Dick was beside him. 

“Larry, you old sorehead — you don’t know how much 
good it does me to hear you s-say that!” he stammered. 
And then, in a steadier voice: “You’re all wrong about 
the fellows not liking you : they'll like you just as much 
as you'll let them. There isn’t a worth-while fellow in 
Old Sheddon that cares a hoot whether you’re rich or 
poor. If you’d only loosen up ” 

Larry did “loosen up” the next day when he was on 
the field with his team ; and it was Oliver McKnight, son 
of any number of millions of Consolidated Steel, who 


THE OFFISH WORM 


33 


applied the loosening twist. In an intermission, Mc- 
Knight came and flung himself down beside Larry. 

“Say, Donovan/’ he began abruptly, “you ought to 
push my face in. Four or five weeks ago I said some 
things about you to Cal Rogers that gave you a good 
right to hate me straight through the four years. Of 
course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me ; but that 
only makes it worse — looks as if I didn’t have the nerve 
to say such things to your face. I was a mucker; and 
ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand enough to 
come and tell you so.” 

There was more than a drop of good, warm, Irish 
blood in Larry Donovan’s veins, as his name would indi- 
cate, and for an impulsive half-second he wanted to throw 
his arms around the pampered son of Consolidated Steel. 
He didn’t quite do that, but he did say what was fitting. 

“That’s all right, Mac — perfectly all right. You just 
forget it. I won’t say that it didn’t rub me the wrong 
way at the time, but ” 

“Thanks, old scout,” McKnight broke in. “I’ve had 
that on my chest until I’m sore as a boil. What chance 
do you think we’re going to stand to lift the hoodoo to- 
morrow ?” 

The morrow was the day set for the “Blacksmiths” 
to play Rockford Poly on the home field. Rockford was 
not in the Conference, but it had a strong eleven, and 
even the best friends of the Sheddon team were saying 
that they hadn’t a chance in the world. But at Mc- 
Knight’s question Larry scraped around and found a bit 
of the newly boosted college loyalty. 

“We’ll never say die till we’re dead,” he asserted. 


34 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


‘‘We've got to get in with both feet and put a barrel of 
pep behind our fellows to-morrow. We simply can't let 
them lose!" 

“Gorry ! it sure sounds good to hear you talk that way. 
But we’re lame, Donnie. Since Critchett and Johnson 
were laid out in that game with the down-State eleven, 
we’ve been sewed up. Brock's put in all of his subs, first 
,and last, and they’ve fizzled on him, one after another. 
Shebbie’s been keeping in wire touch with the team, and 
he says we’ll have to have new material here to-morrow 
for Brock to draw from." 

It was here that Larry showed that he could be gen- 
erous. 

“You’re the best all-round man on the Freshman, Mac, 
and here’s hoping for you," he said; and he meant it. 

“Not on your cabinet photo!" retorted the son of much 
Imoney. “If it comes down to us, you’re It. You’ll be 
here on the field, won’t you?" 

“Sure thing!" said Larry; though, up to that heart- 
mellowing moment when McKnight had made the amende 
honorable , it had been anything in the world but a sure 
thing. 

Dickie Maxwell saw a new light in his room-mate’s 
eyes that night as they settled themselves on either side 
of the study table, but Dickie had a wise streak in him 
which came to the surface once in a while, and he forbore 
to say anything. But, just before they turned in, Larry 
had his say. 

“You remember that bleat that I made about Ollie 
McKnight four or five weeks ago, Dick?" he asked. 

“Yep." 


THE OFFISH WORM 


35 


“I guess I was pretty thin-skinned about that. Mac’s 
all right. He came to me to-day and squared things like 
a man. I’m telling you because I beefed to you about 
what he said ; but you’re not to let it go any further.” 

The day of the Sheddon-Rockford game was all that 
could be desired, weather-wise. A light frost during the 
night — not enough to hurt the field — put a keen tang 
in the air : but the sun was like the one in Alice in Won- 
derland — shining with all its might. A “pep” meeting 
of the student body had been held the night before, and 
when the game was called there wasn’t a vacant seat on 
the bleachers. 

The Rockford team, big fellows, to a man, showed up 
in fine form, and it was evident from the kick-off that it 
was to be a fight for blood. Brock’s men, playing for 
the first time in the season on their home field, and with 
all Sheddon present to shout encouragement, did their 
best; but it wasn’t quite good enough. At the end of the 
second quarter the score stood 7 to nothing in favor of 
the visitors, Rockford having pushed the ball over for a 
touch-down and kicked goal — at which the trainload of 
rooters who had come over from Rockford were yelling 
their heads off. 

“Our offense is pitiful!” Larry told Dick in the inter- 
mission. “Shubrick acts as if he’d been crippled, and 
he’s the only back that’s any good. Brock ought to take 
him out.” 

As he spoke, one of the subs came running up to them, 
breathless with excitement. 

“Donovan!” he panted, “coach says get on your uni- 


36 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


form, quick ! He’s going to put you in Shubrick’s place 
next half !” 

For a moment Larry stood as if dazed. But the next 
instant he was racing for the gymnasium with Dick at 
his heels. 

While Larry fairly jumped from his “civies” into his 
foot-ball togs, Dick talked excitedly. It was a chance — 
biggest chance that had ever been given a Sheddon Fresh- 
man — Larry could put it through — he must put it 
through; and things like that. 

“I’ll be found trying,” was all Larry said; but there 
was a “do-or-die” grin to go with the promise as he 
jerked his belt tight, grabbed up his headgear, and started 
for the field on a run. 

A moment later he was reporting to the coach. The 
members of the team were stripping their sweaters pre- 
paratory to the dash on the field for the second half. 

“I’m not going to start you, Donovan,” said the coach, 
putting an arm across Larry’s shoulders. “You sit on 
the bench with me and I’ll send you in when you’re 
needed.” 

Sitting quietly beside the coach, Larry looked on while 
Rockford took the ball and, by superior weight and superb 
interference, pushed it over for another touch-down just 
as the third quarter ended. The goal was missed, and 
with just fifteen short minutes left to play, the score stood 
Rockford 13, Sheddon nothing. 

Suddenly Brock gripped Larry’s arm. 

“Now’s the time. You take Shubrick’s place. Re- 
member to report to the referee. Then, after the first 
play, tell Clark to run 43 — with you back — that’s you, 


THE OFFISH WORM 


37 


just outside tackle on the right; and then to call you back 
on the other side and run 44 — that’s off tackle on the 
other side. Tell him to keep on running you as long as 
you can gain. You’re our only chance, boy! — and I be- 
lieve you’ll pull us out of the hole !” 

Larry didn’t speak; he merely grinned and dashed on 
the field with his fists clenched so tight that his finger- 
nails were white, and with his teeth set. 

“Donovan for Shubrick at right half!” he snapped 
at the referee. “Shubrick out !” shouted the referee ; and 
a moment later blew his whistle for the resumption of 
play. 

Sheddon had received the kick-off on the thirty-yard 
line. On the first down, Shubrick had been thrown for a 
loss. Clark, Sheddon’s quarter, did not wait for the 
coach’s instructions. He had seen Larry play and knew 
his power. As soon as Larry was in position, Clark 
barked his signal: “Formation right! Donovan back! 
32 — 43 — 59 !” The ball came to Larry on a direct pass 
from the center. Starting toward opponent’s tackle, he 
swerved suddenly to the right and found his hole just in- 
side of the end. Rockford’s full-back got him, but he 
had gained five yards. 

“Good boy, Larry!” yelled Dugald, the big Sheddon 
captain, helping him to his feet. “Do it again !” 

“Watch me!” Larry grinned, jumping back to his 
position. 

And, sure enough, he did do it again, on the same play, 
only this time for seven yards and a first down. By this 
time the Sheddon bleachers were beginning to realize that 
something was happening. There had been little cause 


38 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


for joy in that section of the stands during the first half. 
But now business was certainly picking up. 

“Who’s the new man?” the cheer leader called to the 
coach. 

‘‘Donovan !” the coach shouted back ; and then the cheer 
leader turned to the stands and held up his hands. 

“Everybody get into it!” he yelled. “Fifteen for Don- 
ovan!” and the fifteen might have been heard in the next 
county. 

Larry heard them just as he got the ball for the straight 
third time. The opposing end had crowded in close to 
stop him, so Larry simply ran around him, taking the 
ball to Rockford’s ten-yard line, where Rockford’s quar- 
ter-back brought him down by a beautiful diving tackle. 

Immediately Rockford’s coach sent in several substi- 
tutes in an attempt to stem the tide and prevent a score. 
The Rockford captain was walking up and down, slap- 
ping his linemen on the back, and urging them to “get 
low,” while the Rockford bleachers answered Sheddon’s 
chant of “Touch-down, Sheddon! Touch-down, Shed- 
don !” with a prayer to “Hold ’em, Rockford ! Hold ’em, 
Rockford !” 

Sheddon’s full-back shot into the line for a scant yard. 
He tried again, but could add only two more. Two more 
downs to make seven yards and a touch-down. Shed- 
don’s rooters stood up. Something was wrong. First 
came cries from individuals: “Give it to Donovan!” 
Then the stands roared out, “Give it to Donovan !” 

Rockford knew then that it was to be given to Dono- 
van, and quickly set themselves to stop him. This time 
the signal was for a mass on left tackle. But Larry saw 


THE OFFISH WORM 


39 


at a glance, as the ball came into his hands, that the Rock- 
ford players were bunched just where the play should go 
. . . and in the same glance he saw that there was a hole 
through right guard. Leaving his interference, he shot 
through the hole, dodged the full-back, and dived across 
the goal line. 

Dugald kicked goal, while the Sheddon stands rang 
with the name of Donovan, and the Sheddon players 
patted him on the back and called him “Good old Larry!” 
The score was now 13 to 7, and Sheddon could win with 
another touch-down and goal. 

“How much time to play?” Dugald asked, as Sheddon 
lined up to receive the kick-off — Rockford having chosen 
to kick. 

“Ten minutes !” answered the timekeeper. 

“Come on, fellows — we can do it !” Dugald cried ; and 
the team answered him in bellowing unison, Larry’s voice 
ringing out with a new-found happiness: “Sure we can 
do it! Let’s go!” 

But it was not so easy, this time. Rockford began to 
watch Larry, and every time he took the ball it seemed 
as if the whole Rockford team was on top of him. But 
steadily Sheddon pushed the ball down to Rockford’s 
fifteen-yard line, only to lose it on a fumble. Rockford 
kicked out of danger, and Sheddon again started the 
march to victory. Then the timekeeper announced four 
minutes to play — and the goal was sixty yards away! 

Dugald came out of the line and spoke low to Larry. 

“Larry, you’re the only one who can gain. Can you 
stand to take it every time ?” 

“Give it to me !” Larry answered, gritting his teeth. 


40 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Eight straight times the ball came to him, and eight 
straight times he carried it toward Rockford’s goal. He 
followed no signals — merely took the ball and bucked, 
dodged, fought his way forward. Rockford knew he 
was coming, but they came to know that they could not 
stop him. The bleachers were now giving forth a con- 
tinuous roar ; and when, on the eighth try, Larry carried 
the ball over for Sheddon’s second touch-down, he knew, 
as every man on the field knew, that he had won for 
Sheddon— for Dugald made the victory an assured fact 
by kicking goal, thus making the final score 14-13. 

It was from no lack of college spirit that Larry Don- 
ovan did not turn out that night to join in the song- 
singing, cheer-bellowing “snake dance” wherewith Shed- 
don celebrated its victory. A bruised ankle — that he 
didn’t know was lamed until the game was over — kept 
him in his room, and it was here that Dick found him 
when the long, noisy parade wriggled its way back to the 
campus after having shouted itself hoarse all over town. 

“How’s the old foot-knuckle by now? — hurt much?” 
inquired the celebrator, peeling off the white night-shirt 
which was the regalia for the parade. 

“Nothing to weep about,” said Larry. “It’ll be all right 
in a day or so. Parade over?” 

“Fellows were just coming across the campus when 
I skipped out. Going to disband at the gym., I guess,” 
he added, stepping to the window to look out. Then: 
“No, by jinks! They’re coming this way: Larry, you 
old snipe, they’re coming for you !” 

Pallid panic leaped into the eyes of the temporarily 
crippled substitute half-back. 


THE OFFISH WORM 41 

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Dick — can’t you stop ’em?” he 
gasped. 

But it was too late to stop them. Already the white- 
robed mob was filling the street in front of Mrs. Grant’s. 
“Donovan! Donovan!” it yelled; and Larry, with Dick 
to help him, had to hobble to the window, which Dick 
threw open. 

They didn’t demand a speech; all they wanted was to 
see him. When he waved awkwardly to the surging mass, 
a roar broke forth. Then, with the cheer leader to time 
it, they gave him the Sheddon series. 

When the crowd broke up, Dick led the cripple back 
to his chair, and for quite some little time Larry sat with 
his head in his hands, staring down at an open book 
which might have been printed in Sanskrit for all that 
the words in it meant to him. Dick waited as long as 
he thought he ought to. Then he said : “How about that 
‘workingman’ class line now, Larry?” 

Larry looked up, and the good gray eyes were suspi- 
ciously bright. 

“They’ve broken it down for me, individually, Dick; 
but it’s here, just the same — you know it is. I had a bit 
of good luck this afternoon, and for that they’ve taken 
me in. But there are lots of others who won’t be taken 
in; little Purdick, and Jungman, and dozens that I could 
name.” 

“Well?” said Dick, as one who would say, “What are 
you going to do about it?” 

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Dick,” Larry shot 
back, much as if he had read Dick’s unspoken question; 
“I’m going to make it my job to break the combination — 


42 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


or as much of it as can be broken from my side of the 
fence. Old Sheddon ought to be one and indivisible, all 
through the year, just as it is on the day of a foot-ball 
victory. I’m going to do what one fellow can to make 
it so.” 

Dickie Maxwell started to gasp, but caught himself in 
good time. “That’s the right old stuff!” he chanted 
heartily. “Go to it, old scout, and when the pinches 
come, I’ll be there to help.” 

Yet, later, it was Larry who was to do the helping — 
but that does not belong to the story of the Offish Worm. 


Ill 


THE LAME DOGS 

/~\LD Sheddon, calling itself pretty strictly an engi- 
neering school, is peculiar in one respect : it has no 
dormitories on its campus. Its two thousand (more or 
less) undergraduates live in clubs, fraternity houses, and 
with the neighbors. Practically everybody in the college 
town takes roomers and boarders, and among these pri- 
vate houses the “Man-o’-War” was popular for two rea- 
sons : Mrs. Grant was a most motherly home body ; and 
her pies were, as Dickie Maxwell put it, “simply out of 
sight.” 

Dick and Larry had the largest of the upstairs rooms, 
with two windows on the side toward the street and the 
campus. While the college year was still in its infancy, 
it began to be remarked that these windows were seldom 
dark in the evening. Which meant that at least one of 
the room’s occupants knew what he wanted and was go- 
ing stubbornly after it. 

“Great Peter !” Dick complained, one evening after the 
Thanksgiving game had closed the foot-ball season, 
“aren’t you ever going to take any time off at all, Larry ? 
See here; I’ve got an 'invite’ to a blowout at the Omeg 
house to-night, and it includes you. Cut out the studious 
stuff for a change and surprise yourself by coming along 
to mix and mingle for an hour or so.” 

43 


44 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Nix on the social stuff,” grumbled the big, red-headed 
fellow at the study table; “I’ve got two English themes 
to write.” 

“Which means that you don’t want to go,” Dick 
charged discontentedly. 

“All right; you can put it that way, if you like. You 
know what I think about the frats.” 

“I know you’re a howling crank about ’em. You 
haven’t a single argument against ’em that’ll hold water.” 

“Sure I have. But I haven’t time to trot them out for 
you now. Got these themes to chew on, and after 
that ” 

“Yes; and after that, your lame dogs will begin to 
string in. You’ve got the wrong slant on the cripples, 
Larry; the faculty has the right one. If a fellow can’t 
keep up with the parade, out he goes. And he ought 
to go.” 

“I can’t see it that way — not for the kind of fellows 
who have taken to dropping in here. They want to stay 
in college — want to make good. And most of ’em only 
need a little boosting and jacking up.” 

“Well,” said Dick, hustling into his good clothes, “I’m 
mighty glad I don’t have to look at it through your spec- 
tacles. I don’t want to be a pack-mule before my time.” 

When he was left alone, Larry dug for the themes. 
English was his “black beast,” as a Frenchman would put 
it, and he had to work like a Turk for it — that is, if 
Turks ever do work. In his time — which was only yes- 
terday — managers of the nation’s great industries were 
beginning to say that the technical colleges were paying 
too little attention to English ; that they were turning out 


THE LAME DOGS 


45 


engineers who couldn’t write an ordinary, every-day busi- 
ness letter. Hence the technicals, Old Sheddon among 
them, were stressing the English course. 

Larry’s home surroundings hadn’t been particularly 
conducive to the growth of literary English. In the Don- 
ovan home “ain’t” and “he don’t” and “might of” had 
their places at the fireside, along with split infinitives, 
plural verbs in the wrong places, “let him and I,” tele- 
phone answers like “this is him,” and a lot of other ex- 
pressions that the grammar books call “colloquialisms.” 
So he had to labor pretty heavily in “English I.” 

But in Mathematics it was exactly the other way 
around. Here the big, athletic Freshman soon became 
known as a “shark,” and a good-natured “shark” is an 
institution not to be undervalued in any college. Before 
the foot-ball season closed, Larry was acquiring a small 
following of “lame dogs” ; fellows who had to be helped 
over the stile, if they were going to get over at all; hence, 
Dickie Maxwell’s wail about pack-mules and such. 

Down underneath the good-nature which prompted 
these helpings, Larry had a sort of ill-defined motive 
which was more or less to his credit. As a son of a 
workingman he had entered college with the feeling that 
he was going to be looked down upon, and certain fellows 
with more money than sense had either thoughtlessly or 
maliciously helped the feeling to grow. But in the better 
part of him, Larry was too square and man-sized to be- 
come that bitterest of all things, the college grouch, so 
he had begun to open out a bit on the side of the help- 
ings, this though he was still hanging on to the idea that 
between the son of an ex-locomotive engineer and, let us 


46 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


say, a member of the richest Greek-letter fraternity, there 
was a gulf fixed, great and impassable. 

Dick had been gone a full hour, and the second of the 
English themes was well on its way to completion when 
the door opened and little Purdick slid in. At first sight, 
anybody would have said that Charles Purdick had cer- 
tainly missed the mark by a broad mile in choosing an 
engineering course. Undersized, with a thin, eager face 
and pale-blue, tired eyes, he looked more like a candidate 
for a sanitarium than anything else. 

“Hello, old scout!” said Larry in a cheerful growl. 
“Thought maybe you’d be showing up. Drag out that 
easy-chair and flop. Had a tough day?” 

The undersized one tried to laugh his weariness off. 

“If you ever have to work any part of your way 
through, don’t you take a restaurant for it,” he advised; 
adding, “I don’t mind waiting on table and having to re- 
fuse the tips — I’m sort o’ case-hardened to that now. But 
the dish-washing sure does get next to me.” 

“I’ll bet,” said Larry. “At home I was lucky ; have a 
sister two years younger than I am. But that’s all that 
saved me. Stuck on the trig, again?” 

“I’m always stuck on the trig. If I didn’t love ma- 
chinery so well, I’d think I’d made the mistake of my 
life in coming to Sheddon. Yet the High School Math, 
didn’t bother me so much.” 

“Pull up your chair and let’s have a crack at it,” said 
Larry. “I looked it over just after supper, and it isn’t 
so awfully rocky, this time.” 

With the trigonometry lesson but fairly begun, another 
of the lame ones dropped in; then a third and fourth. 


THE LAME DOGS 


47 


Larry didn’t “baby” the mental mendicants — not any; on 
the contrary, with the exception of little Purdick, he was 
gruffly sarcastic with them, calling them cripples, and de- 
manding to know how long it was going to be before 
they’d throw the crutches away. It was the wise thing 
to do, but Larry didn’t do it because he was wise; it was 
chiefly impatience with a bunch of fellows the majority 
of 'vtoiom hadn’t made the most of their preparatory ad- 
vantages while they had them. 

Purdick, the first to come, was the last to go. After 
the others had dropped out one by one, he told Larry why 
he was lingering. 

“You’ve been rattling good to me, Donovan, and there’s 
something I ought to tell you,” was the way he began 
the thing that had to be said. 

“All right ; spill it,” said Larry. 

“This fellow Underhill, in your section; you had a 
racket with him after the foot-ball game with Rockford 
Poly, didn’t you?” 

“Not much of a racket. He was standing, with a 
bunch of his own kind, on the gym. steps as I came from 
the showers, and was busy black-listing the coach for 
having put me in : said it was a disgrace to Sheddon to 
use a ‘mucker’ on the ’Varsity, and then chucked in some 
things about my home folks that I don’t take from any- 
body.” 

“Did you hit him?” 

“No; I tried it, but the others got between. Then I 
guess I did a fool thing. Underhill’s father is the head 
of a firm of railroad contractors. A couple of years back 
this firm had a job on our home railroad, and it did so 


48 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


much crooked work that the contract had to be cancelled. 
Dick told me about this one day when Underhill had 
gone out of his way to cold-shoulder me.” 

“And you slammed that in Undy’s face ?” 

Larry nodded. “I was hot, and didn’t have any better 
sense.” 

Little Purdick wriggled uneasily in his chair. 

“It’s snitching, in a way, I suppose, but I’ve got to tell 
you, Donnie. Underhill and his bunch eat at the restau- 
rant, pretty often. They talk before me just as if I 
wasn’t there — as I guess they would before any ‘menial/ 
Underhill’s got it in for you. I overheard him tell the 
other fellows of his crowd that he was going to make 
Sheddon too hot to hold you ; he said the university wasn’t 
big enough to hold you and him at the same time.” 

“That was just bunk,” said Larry contemptuously. 

“I don’t know,” Purdick returned slowly. “He’s got 
all the money there is in the world ; and a spender always 
gets a crowd around him — of the kind that’ll do his dirty 
work for him.” 

“How come you know so much about it, Purdy?” 

“It’s up to me to know. This is my second year in 
Sheddon. I was here last year and flunked out — had to 
take the work over again. I guess I’m not much good, 
anyway.” 

Larry had his own opinion about that. What he sus- 
pected was that Purdick had had to do so much outside 
work for the money-earning that he hadn’t had time, or 
the needed energy, for study — which was the fact. 

While Larry was arriving at the fact, Purdick got up 


THE LAME DOGS 


49 


to go. But at the door he turned, and his face was white 
and the hand on the door-knob was shaking. 

“Donovan, I hope you’ll do that fellow up, cold!” he 
snapped, with his pale eyes ablaze. 

“Ump!” said Larry. Then: “Why the sudden burst 
of fury?” 

“You know, perfectly well. He and his kind are al- 
ways putting you and me and our kind to the wall — 
squeezing the life out of the working classes. They got 
my father between the millstones and ground him till he 
died! But our time’s coming; and when it does come — 
look out!” 

“Here, you firebrand — come back here!” Larry called; 
but the door had slammed and the lame dog was gone. 

For some little time after Purdick had left him, Larry 
sat at the table with his square chin propped in his cupped 
hands. Class distinctions, as between rich and poor, had 
never troubled him very much in his home life. There 
hadn’t been any hard-and-fast line drawn in the home 
High School, or, if there had been, it was fellows like 
himself — sons of workingmen — who drew it. 

Naturally, while he was working spare time in the rail- 
road shop and roundhouse, he had heard more or less 
talk about labor and capital, and about the battle that 
would one day be fought to a finish between the two; 
but most of this had gone in one ear and out the other. 
Dick Maxwell’s father, who, besides being general man- 
ager of the railroad, was a fairly wealthy mine owner, 
was the only “capitalist” he had ever known, and there 
was certainly no fault to be found with him. 

But the Underhill tribe — new-crop rich, somebody had 


50 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


called them — was another matter. Of course, Bryant 
Underhill, Sheddon Freshman, wasn’t responsible for 
what his father did ; but he was evidently willing to have 
sins enough of his own to answer for. 

Then, on the other side, here was little Purdick, type 
of the down-trodden; spiteful and vindictive; the stuff 
out of which anarchists are made. Larry drew a long 
breath. Even in this early stage of it, college life was 
opening up some pretty large fields. 

As to the Underhill threat — that he, Larry Donovan, 
was to be forced to leave Sheddon — Larry dismissed this 
promptly. Quite likely Underhill, helped by his own set, 
might try to start something; but, if so, he wouldn’t get 
anywhere with it. 

That was the way Larry left it when he went to bed 
that night; and by morning he had forgotten the threat. 
But the morning ushered in a day to be marked in the 
calendar with a letter in charcoal black; a day in which 
everything seemed to go wrong end to. 

It began in “Practical Mechanics.” In Sheddon three 
of the engineering courses — Electrical, Mechanical and 
Civil — include so many hours a week of shop work. At 
that moment Larry’s section was in the blacksmith’s shop ; 
fifty students at fifty forges doing actual blacksmithing, 
under an instructor who was himself a skilled workman. 

Having grown up with tools and forges and machinery, 
Larry thought of the shop work as an easy walk-over, 
and so it had been up to this day of helpless botchings. 
But now he couldn’t seem to get anything right. The 
hour was given to welding, and the metal simply wouldn’t 
weld. Larry cleaned his fire again and again ; put it out 


THE LAME DOGS 


51 


once and built it over afresh; and still he made nothing 
but botches. 

“You’ll have to do better than this, Donovan,” warned 
the instructor, at the close of the futile hour. Then he 
added something that wasn’t quite deserved. “You fel- 
lows who have had a bit of outside shop experience 
mustn’t think you know it all. I can’t give you anything 
better than a cipher on this morning’s work.” 

With this for a send-off it wasn’t very strange that the 
entire day went wrong. Larry blew up in English, went 
to pieces in Physics, made a mess of his drawing hour, 
and even stumbled in Math. — in the very lesson in which 
he had successfully coached his “lame dogs.” 

“This sure has been one beautiful day!” he growled 
to Dick, when they were settled in their room for the 
evening. “I’ve gone bunk on everything I’ve touched!” 

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Dick easily. “Everybody 
has a day like that once in a while. You just got up on 
the wrong side of the bed this morning; that’s all.” 

Very sensibly, Larry tried to let it go at that; but, 
oddly enough, it refused to “go.” Day after day the 
failures continued, usually beginning with the shop work 
and then spreading, like a contagious disease, to every- 
thing else. In the foundry his flasks “fell down,” and 
the castings came out looking as if a dog had gnawed 
them. In the pattern shop, plane-irons that he had 
whetted to a razor-edge nicked and spoiled the job. In 
the machine shop it was even worse; every machine tool 
he tried to use bucked on him and ruined something. 

Of course, there were consequences — mighty unpleas- 
ant ones. With poor markings, or what you might call 


52 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


no markings, he was called before the chief of the shop 
staff, warned once that he would have to pull his standing 
up, warned a second time, and then, one morning, a fac- 
ulty notice came. He was falling below passing grades 
in everything but Mathematics. If he couldn’t do better, 
the faculty would reluctantly be obliged to conclude that 
he hadn’t sufficient preparation for a college course. 

“ I don’t know what is the matter with me,” he con- 
fessed to Dick on the day when the faculty notice came. 
“I’m just all shot to pieces. Why, Dick, I don’t know 
myself any more! Things that used to come as easy as 
rolling off a log stump me as if I’d never heard of them 
before.” 

“Not sick, are you?” Dick queried sympathetically. 

“Only in my fool head and hands. I break everything 
I touch ; and when I get a question in class, I simply blow 
up. I don’t blame the professors. Anybody would think 
I was solid ivory from the neck up!” 

Dick shook his head. “I can’t understand it any better 
than you can, Larry. But there’s a reason, if you could 
find it. You’re not worrying about anything, are you?” 

“Home matters, you mean ? There’s nothing to worry 
about at home. No ; my grief is right here, with myself.” 
Then, with a look of wretchedness that was pretty foreign 
to the good, wide-set eyes: “It’ll break my heart, Dick, 
if I have to flunk out. And I’m headed straight for it 
now, sure as a gun!” 

Dickie Maxwell got up and began to walk the floor with 
his hands in his pockets. Finally he said: “Say, Larry; 
how much do you know about Psychology?” 

Larry grunted. “Nothing; except that I don’t take 
much stock in it. Why?” 


THE LAME DOGS 


53 


“I’ve been messing in it a little lately. There’s a lot 
of the stuff that I don’t understand, but there are some 
things that I do. For instance, if you get off on the 
wrong foot in a sprint, the wrongness is likely to stick 
to you through the whole race.” 

“Everybody knows that much,” Larry admitted. “But 
what has that got to do with my 'busting’?” 

“I was just coming to that. If you blow up in some- 
thing in the morning, you’re likely to go on blowing up 
all day.” 

“All right; that’s exactly what I do.” 

“Your section has shop work in the mornings, 
doesn’t it?” 

“Yes.” 

“And it’s in the shops that you begin to go bad, isn’t 
it?” 

“For two solid weeks I’ve been breaking or spoiling 
everything I’ve touched.” 

“There you are.. With such a send-off, old Doctor 
Psychology would say that, unless you should fetch your- 
self up with a round turn, you’d be likely to go on 
foozling all day. And that’s what you do.” 

“You’ve said it. But that doesn’t get me anywhere.” 

“Wait : we’ve chased it back to the shop work. Now 
let’s take another tack. Have you got any 'lame dogs’ in 
the shops — fellows that follow you around and try to get 
helped?” 

“Yes, one; fellow named Crawford. He is sticking 
to me yet, though goodness knows there isn’t any reason 
why he should.” 

“Hah!” said Dick, dropping into a chair. “Snitty 


54 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Crawford, eh? I don’t much like that big fumbler, 
Larry.” 

“I don’t either. But he’s such a miserable dub in Prac. 
Meehan., that I felt as though somebody ought to give 
him a boost.” 

“Know him any, outside of the class work?” 

Larry shook his head, and Dick went on: 

“It just so happens that I do. He’s the worst sort that 
ever gets into college ; a fawner on some fellow with more 
money than brains. Off the campus he’s Bry Under- 
hill’s shadow.” 

Larry jumped as if some one had slapped him. In a 
flash little Purdick’s warning, long since forgotten, came 
back to him — “a spender always gets a crowd around 
him — of the kind that’ll do his dirty work for him.” 
Could it be possible 

“Say, Dick,” he broke out savagely; “do you suppose 
anybody could have been framing me up to 'bust’ on this 
shop work, right along?” 

“Why — if you had an enemy that hated you hard 
enough : I’ll admit that’s what I had in mind, Larry ; but 
it can’t be. A fellow who would do such a thing as that 
couldn’t stay twenty-four hours in Old Sheddon.” 

“Couldn’t he?” Larry said; but that is all he did say. 
And when Dick would have gone on to talk more about 
the present-moment sad state of affairs, the “shark” stuck 
his nose in a book and seemed to have lost all interest in 
the subject of his critical standing — or his no-standing — 
in the Registrar’s records. 

But the next morning, in the shop-work period, he was 
as sharp-eyed as a cornered rat. His job — “exercise,” 


THE LAME DOGS 


55 


they called it — that morning was to turn a piece of round 
shafting to fit the hole in a pulley. Lathe work was one 
of the things he had learned fairly well in the old home 
railroad shop, and he ran the roughing chip in a few 
minutes. Setting the tool for the finishing chip, he 
stopped the lathe and turned to the bench behind him to 
try the gauge in the pulley-hole. As he did so, somebody 
passed between him and his lathe, and he looked up 
quickly. It was Crawford. 

That was enough to make him extra cautious. Before 
starting the lathe again he examined the reading of the 
micrometer scale on the tool-rest. The mischief had been 
done. The tool had been advanced, just the least little 
fraction in the world, but it was enough. If he had let 
the tool run without resetting, the piece of work would 
have been spoiled. 

With this for a starter, he not only kept his eye on 
Crawford during the entire period; he also put the fellow 
next to him on the watch. Three several times the “lame 
dog” set traps for him into which he would have blun- 
dered helplessly if he hadn’t been forewarned. Once, in 
a screw-cutting exercise, the gears were changed on his 
lathe, and it had been done so deftly that he wouldn’t 
have believed it if the gears themselves hadn’t proved it. 
Again, it was a sly loosening of the tail-stock clamp, 
which would have let the work fall out when the lathe 
was started. Lastly, it was a “cut-in” on the wiring of 
the lathe motor, which would probably have burned out 
the motor if the current had been switched on. 

Larry, seething inwardly like a pot ready to boil over, 
corrected the sabotage in each case before any harm was 


56 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


done, held on grimly, and said nothing. Before the shop 
period was over, the psychological reaction had begun 
to set in. Now that he knew that the fault wasn’t his 
own; hadn’t been his own at all; he was able to take a 
fresh grip upon himself. Gorman, the shop instructor, 
gave him the final little upward boost when he came 
around to examine and stamp the work of the period. 

“Now, that is something like it, Donovan,” he said, in 
warm approval. “Glad to see that you’re getting back 
to your old form. You get 'tens’ all around, this time. 
Keep it up and you’ll work off some of the discredits 
you’ve been earning.” 

It was on the tip of Larry’s tongue to tell the instruc- 
tor the real reason for the discredits, but again he held 
himself in. The matter, as it stood, lay between himself 
and Crawford — and possibly Underhill — and he set his 
teeth upon a frowning resolve to make the plotters answer 
to him and not to the faculty. 

With the mystery of his stumblings thus completely 
solved, he went to his other assignments for the day with 
the handicap lifted. Straight “A’s” were his grades for 
that day, and his various instructors marveled as much 
over his sudden “come-back” as they had over his equally 
sudden slump. 

It was at the close of the gymnasium half-hour, late 
in the afternoon, that he caught Crawford. The spoiler 
of records was on his way to his room, which was in a 
street reached most easily by cutting across a field lying 
back of the campus. Larry tried to keep cool ; meant to 
keep perfectly cool; but his hand shook a little when he 
laid it on Crawford’s shoulder. “I’ll walk a piece with 


THE LAME DOGS 


5 7 


you,” was all he permitted himself to say; and as if some 
inner sense was telling him that something was about to 
happen, the big-bodied, hulking culprit kept step in 
silence. 

After they had crossed the stile into the field, and were 
thus off the university grounds, Larry wheeled short upon 
the sham “lame dog.” 

“You’ve been doing me dirt, Crawford, and this is pay- 
day,” he snapped, trying to say it calmly. “Will you 
peel your coat?” 

A frenzied outburst of denial was the answer to this. 
Like any fellow who would stoop to the things he had 
been doing, Crawford was a shrinking coward at heart; 
this though he would have tipped the scale at twelve or 
fifteen pounds more than Larry. 

“Oh, good gosh ! — hold on — somebody’s been lying to 
you!” he protested. “I ” 

“Cut it out,” said Larry. “I caught you at it in the 
shop this morning, and I’ve got Dowling for a witness. 
You did everything you could think of to make me get a 
goose-egg marking, and you’ve been doing it right along 
for two weeks. What did you put into my fire in the 
blacksmith shop so that I couldn’t make a weld? Tell the 
truth !” 

Crawford hung his head. “It was only a joke,” he 
mumbled. “I just put a liT pinch of sulphur in the fire, 
to see what you’d do.” 

“A joke, was it? And I suppose it was a joke to knock 
my flasks down in the foundry, and to nick my planes and 
chisels on the pattern bench. Now, one question more: 
who put you up to all this?” 


58 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


For some little while Crawford wouldn’t answer this 
direct question, filling the air with shrill protestations of 
his innocence of any malicious motive, and the like. But 
Larry pinned him down savagely. 

“Out with it ! I want to know whom you were work- 
ing for*” 

It came out at last — because it had to. 

“Bry Underhill — and some of the other fellows — said 
you were a ‘mucker’ and oughtn’t to be allowed to stay,” 
was the final hang-dog admission. 

“So much for that part of it,” said Larry grittingly. 
“Now, I’m going to give you your choice. As I said, 
I’ve got a witness to what you did to me in the shop to- 
day. I can go before the faculty and get you canned. It’s 
up to you to say whether you’ll take that, or pull off your 
coat right here and stand up to me like the man you’ll 
never be.” 

By this time Crawford was snarling — not like a man, 
but more like a trapped fox. 

“If you make me fight, I — I’ll kill you!” fte stormed; 
but he did take his coat off and fling it aside. 

Then and there, in the dusk of the evening in Farmer 
Holdsworth’s stubble field, was staged the historic battle 
of the year. It is said that a cornered coward can always 
fight if he is driven to it, and Crawford made the saying 
good, hurling himself upon Larry in a mad-bull rush that 
was meant to end in a clinch in which his superior weight 
would give him the advantage. But when the clinch ar- 
rived, Larry was not there; there was nothing there but 
a stiff forearm with a fist at the end of it against which 
Crawford pushed his right eye vigorously. 



“ Will you peel your coat ? ” 




■ 










* 


















































































' 



























































































































































































































































































THE LAME DOGS 


59 


In the next rush it was his nose with which he endeav- 
ored to push the hard fist aside. Larry hadn’t much 
“science,” but it doesn’t ask for any great amount of skill 
to let a frenzied maniac beat himself silly if he is suffi- 
ciently bent upon doing it. One thorough and rather pro- 
longed round settled it. At the end of the one-sided 
boxing match Crawford was down, and either couldn’t 
or wouldn’t get up; could — or would — do nothing but 
gasp out that he had enough. 

Larry did the decent thing — and did it as reluctantly 
as he ever did anything in his life — hauled the thrashed 
coward to his feet, took him across the field to his board- 
ing-house, helped him get rid of such of the battle marks 
as the bath-room appliances could remove. All this in 
grimmest silence. But as he was leaving he claimed the 
victor’s privilege of having the last word. 

“You go to the fellow whose boots you’ve been licking 
and tell him what you got from the ‘mucker.’ And t when 
you do it, you may tell him from me that he can have 
the same, or a little better, any time he’s man enough to 
ask for it. And one other thing, Crawford. You stay 
out from under my feet from this time on. If you don’t, 
you’ll get it again.” 

One of the problems that has never been satisfactorily 
solved, and perhaps never will be, is how the news of a 
thing done in privacy gets wings of the wind to scatter it 
abroad. Larry thought that the brief and brittle mix-up, 
staged in the growing dusk in Farmer Holdsworth’s 
wheat field, had been wholly without witnesses. But that 
same evening, after supper, Dickie Maxwell leered know- 
ingly at him across the study table. 


60 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“So you chased up my little hint and whaled the day- 
lights out of Snitty Crawford, did you?” he laughed. 

Larry glanced up frowning. 

“Who told you anything about that?” he demanded. 

“Gee! everybody knows,” Dick crowed. “I don’t know 
who started the little news item on its rounds. But you 
ought to have the thanks of every decent fellow in Shed- 
don. Crumb-catchers like Snitty make me sick.” 

Larry nodded soberly. 

“Yes, Crawford got his ; but, after all, he was only a 
poor tool in Underhill’s hands. It runs in my mind, Dick, 
that I’m still in debt — to Underhill and the whole money- 
rotten gang that he runs with. After the foot-ball game 
I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to draw any 
more rich-and-poor lines, or let them be drawn against 
me; that I’d stand for Old Sheddon as a whole. But if 
these gambling, betting, money-spenders want a fight, 
they can have it. It’s the old battle, and I guess it’s got 
to be fought out — here and everywhere else.” 

For a little while Dick was silent. When he spoke 
again it was to say : “I suppose my father is what you’d 
call a rich man. Does that mean that you’re against us 
all, Larry?” 

“Not against you, Dick; but I’ve got to stand with 
my kind. And that brings on more talk. In a way, I’m 
little better than Crawford ; he’s a hanger-on of the rich 
fellows, and I’m a pensioner on your father. I know he 
has consented to call the money he is advancing me a 
loan, but after what’s happened I can’t take it any more. 
I’ve got to be consistent. I can’t fight on both sides of 
the fence at the same time.” 


THE LAME DOGS 


61 


“Larry!” Dick exclaimed. 

“I know. It sounds ungrateful, and all that; but I’ve 
made up my mind — made it up this morning. Prof. 
Zippert will get me odd jobs of tutoring in Math, if I 
want them, and will put in a good word for me with 
Waddell and Gorman, so I can help out in the shops. I 
may have to live cheaper than I can here at Mrs. Grant's ; 
but that’s all right.” 

“You — you’d break with me, Larry?” 

Larry Donovan looked straight into his room-mate’s 
eyes. 

“Never, Dick; not until you want me to. But I can’t 
hold with the hare and run with the hounds. You’ll have 
your friends, and maybe I’ll have mine. And they won’t 
be the same.” 

Dickie Maxwell threw his head back and laughed — 
because it was the saving thing for him to do, just then. 

“You’re crazy, Larry; as crazy as a loon! But I’ll not 
lay it up against you. To-morrow, after you’ve cooled 
down a bit from this run-in with Snitty Crawford, you’ll 
see things in a better light. You see, I know you of old.” 

But college brings out a good many things that don’t 
envision themselves in a High School course; and Dick 
Maxwell had yet to learn how stubborn a mule — and how 
loyal a friend — Larry Donovan could be in a time of trial. 


IV 

dick's drop-out 

T OU’VE made up your mind then, have you, Dick?” 

Larry Donovan had his small drawing-board on 
the study table and was working out a tangled problem 
in “projection^.” Dick Maxwell had just tossed his 
books aside and was walking the floor, hands in pockets ; 
his habit when there was anything to be argued about. 

“I don't know why I shouldn’t fall all over myself to 
jump at the chance,” he returned. “Dad was a member 
of the Omegs, right here in Old Sheddon, and, as I’ve 
said, they've given me a bid. I think it's mighty nice of 
the fellows.” Then : “I didn't expect you’d give me the 
glad hand. You've been sort of prejudiced against the 
frats from the first, haven’t you?” 

“Maybe some of it is prejudice,” Larry admitted, want- 
ing to be perfectly fair ; “but to me the whole fraternity 
idea seems to take a wrong shoot. If any place in the 
world ought to be democratic it’s a college. When little 
bunches of the fellows pull off to one side and shut out 
the rest . . . well, that’s bad enough; but when, on top 

of that, they try to run things ” 

“The fraternities don’t try to run anything but them- 
selves,” Dick defended. “That’s only your idea, Larry.” 

This was entirely true. When we look through the 
battered old telescope called Life, we see mostly what 
62 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


63 


we are expecting to see; and with his workingman’s eye 
Larry wasn’t expecting to see much good in anything as 
exclusive as a fraternity. 

“Maybe they don’t openly try to run things,” he coun- 
tered. “But they stand together and hold themselves as 
being a lot better than us fellows on the outside. You 
know they do.” 

“Well,” said Dick, grinning, “they get the pick of the 
fellows from each incoming class, or try to : why 
shouldn’t they be better than the leavings?” 

Larry’s answering grin was perfectly good-tempered. 
They had threshed this matter out a good many times in 
the past. 

“Present company excepted, I take it,” he put in, add- 
ing : “I’m one of the ‘leavings,’ you know.” 

Dick sat down, chuckling delightedly. 

“I just wanted to see how you’d take that,” he ex- 
plained. “You have the one big necessary qualification — 
angelic humility. You’ll do, all right.” 

“Do for what?” 

Dick got up and put an arm across Larry’s shoulders. 

“You hump-backed old greasy grind!” he chanted; 
“did you swallow the notion that I was going to duck out 
and leave you to wallow all alone in the mire of your own 
splendiferous conceit? It’s a dead secret yet, but I’m 
allowed to whisper it to you. You’re due to get a bid 
to the Omegs yourself !” 

For a little time Larry merely stared down at the 
demonstration drawing he was making and said nothing. 
For a fellow with a good bit of Celtic blood in his veins, 
he was a trifle slow in grasping the full significance of a 


64 


DICK AND LARRY : FRESHMEN 


thing. As we have seen, Dick’s charge that he was preju- 
diced against the Greek-letter fraternities was quite true. 
Moreover, he believed that his argument against them 
was sound : that they did make for a drawing apart and 
the formation of small cliques. And beyond this, there 
was that workingman’s grudge. If the fraternities were 
not all made up of the sons of rich men and money- 
spenders, the one or two that he knew most about seemed 
to lean that way; and, quite as certainly, some of their 
members looked down as “riff-raff” upon the “leavings,” 
which, in Old Sheddon, as in many other universities and 
colleges, comprised a good half or more of the student 
body. 

On the other hand . . , well, up to that moment 
Larry hadn’t been admitting that there was any “other 
hand” worth mentioning; had fully and firmly decided 
that there couldn’t be — for him. Yet it takes a pretty 
strong resolution to be able to hold out when common 
old human vanity is appealed to. In a sort of flashlight 
picture Larry saw himself as one of the chosen ones, 
ensconced in the big, comfortable, not to say luxurious, 
frat house just across the street from the main entrance 
to the campus; still Dick’s loyal running mate and chum, 
and making good his standing with the other fellows in 
the house by winning an “S” for himself and the brother- 
hood in athletics. 

What if, after all, his ideas about the rich and poor 
distinctions were all wrong ? It certainly looked that way 
when the exclusive Omegs were intending to give him 
a bid. So his protest, when he made it, was really no 
protest at all. 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


65 


“If they should take me in, it would be entirely on your 
account, Dick; and I couldn’t stand for that/’ 

“Not by a thousand parasangsl Those things go by 
secret ballot; Carey Lansing explained all that. I had 
nothing to do with it — couldn’t have, because I’m only a 
'pledge’ myself.” 

“Well, then, there’s the money. I’m a lot too poor to 
hold up my end with that bunch.” 

Dick sat down and squared himself aggressively. 

“Now, see here; let’s fight that out, once for all,” he 
argued. “Before we left home, my father, acting for the 
railroad company, offered to pay your way through col- 
lege as a sort of prize for the good work you did last 
summer on the Little Ophir Extension. A week ago 
you told me you were sore at all the rich people, and were 
going to fling the money back in their faces and earn your 
own way. 

“I hope you’ve thought better of that by this time; 
and if you have, I’ve only this to say: Dad expects you 
to have all the advantages here that I shall have ; he told 
me so. He — or the company — will pay your frat dues 
just as cheerfully as they will your tuition and board 
bills — you know they will.” 

Truly, Larry did know it; hence the knees of his con- 
tinued protest grew weaker still. 

“It’s kind of an honor, I guess,” he admitted soberly. 
“Yet I can’t change over all at once. I’m slow; slower 
than Christmas, Dick. You know that. I’ll have to have 
time to think it out.” 

“Sure you will!” Dick agreed, reaching for his cap. 
And a moment later he was gone; to one of those social 


66 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


doings which were by this time cutting pretty deeply into 
his evening study hours. 

Larry had been alone for some little time when his door 
opened to admit Havercamp, a Junior and the editor of 
the college paper. 

“Hello, Donovan !” he boomed; and as Larry reached 
for a chair: “No, I can’t stop — just on my way over 
town to put the Micrometer to bed. What college activi- 
ties are you in?” 

Larry shook his head. “Trying to break into athletics 
a little, as you know.” 

“Sure I know! Didn’t I see you put the wallop into 
the Rockford Poly game? That’s what brings me up 
here. I want you on the Micrometer — athletic reporter.” 

“But, see here,” Larry objected; “I can’t write for little 
sour apples!” 

“You’ll never learn any younger. Dig in and try it; 
you can begin right away and hash up something snappy 
about basket-ball. You know how the athletic frenzy dies 
out after foot-ball, and we want to keep the door slam- 
ming. Go to it; good exercise in English One. If you 
ball things up at first, we’ll help you out. That’s all. 
Good-night !” 

Larry turned back to his work with a little prideful 
glow; added to that other glow which had come upon 
Dick’s announcement as to the intention of the Omegs. 
It was the first time he had been asked to take part on 
any of the extra-curriculum activities, and though he 
doubted his ability to write anything that anybody would 
print, he was perfectly willing to try. 

Consequently, a little later he went over to the gym- 


DICK’S DROP-PUT, 


63 


nasium where two of the basket-ball teams were practic- 
ing, got duly interested, and sat up until nearly midnight 
wrestling with his first attempt at writing for print, 
grinding out a couple of columns, which, by the way, 
Havercamp blue-penciled to a short and snappy stickful 
in the next issue of the Micrometer. 

A couple of evenings after this, Larry found himself 
holding a reception — that is, a little bigger reception than 
usual — in his room at Mrs. Grant’s. Apart from the 
lame dogs, who came pretty regularly, sundry other fel- 
lows had discovered that Dick Maxwell’s red-headed 
room-mate was what you might call a heaven-born 
mathematician, that he was good-natured, and that an 
evening spent in his company was likely to result in 
better Math, markings for the spender. 

For that reason the evening in-droppings were growing 
quite frequent, and when, on the night in question, the 
callers included Carey Lansing, a Senior, and Grand 
Satrap, or whatever you call it, of the Zeta Omegas, 
Larry thought nothing of it. 

“Just wanted to see how you looked in action, Donnie,” 
Lansing said, explaining his own butt-in. “The fellows 
tell me you are a whale in Math. Where did you get it 
all?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Larry. “I never did have 
much trouble with figures.” 

“You’re in luck. Freshman Math, is plenty stiff in 
Sheddon. I fell down all over it in my first year. I 
remember there was one problem — old ‘seven-fifty-four,’ 
we used to call it — that was a regular bear trap— caught 
the last man of us in my year.” 


68 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Seven-fifty- four?” Larry queried. “Why, we have 
that in to-morrow’s assignment. Here it is,” and from a 
sheaf of demonstration sheets he took one covered hand- 
somely with figures and illustrative drawings. 

“That’s the old boy,” said Lansing, running his eye 
over the sheet ; and from that he went on, talking easily 
of his Freshman days and their trials and tribulations. 

As Lansing talked, Larry was watching the clock 
rather anxiously, hoping Dick would come in. In his 
bones he felt that Lansing was waiting for a chance to 
say something about the coming bid for membership in 
the Omegs — possibly the bid itself would be made. And 
Larry was not yet ready with his answer. Ambition, a 
keen hunger and thirst to be one of the particularized, 
was pulling one way, and something else — he couldn’t 
quite give it a definite name — was nervously putting the 
brakes on. 

As it turned out, the clock-watching wasn’t needed. 
Dick came in before the room was cleared, so Larry had 
the excuse he had been waiting for; the chance to plead 
his Micrometer assignment and get away to the gym- 
nasium without leaving his drop-ins with no host. 

During the basket-ball practice games through which 
he sat making notes for Havercamp’s blue-pencilings, 
Problem 754, the one to which Lansing had called atten- 
tion, was ambling around in the back part of his brain; 
and in the process of recalling it, step by step, it suddenly 
occurred to him that in a certain small particular the 
demonstration he had shown Lansing was at fault; the 
result was all right, but in one place the value of the x 
plus y had been assumed and not proved. 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


69 


“Queer how I came to make such a bonehead crack 
as that,” he muttered, as he walked back across the 
campus ; and when he reached his room and found every- 
body gone, and Dick — for a wonder — in bed and sound 
asleep, he looked on the study table for the demonstra- 
tion sheet, meaning to correct the slip. 

Oddly enough, the sheet wasn’t to be found. He had 
either misplaced it, or it had disappeared during his ab- 
sence. Since it was wrong, anyhow, he did not search 
very long or carefully; instead, he sat down and pains- 
takingly made another sheet, correcting the error that 
had appeared in the original; did that, and then went to 
bed and forgot the incident. 

But the next day in class he was pointedly reminded 
of it. Blackboard demonstrations were called for and 
Problem 754 was given out. Having the processes at his 
finger-ends, Larry got through quickly and returned to 
his seat. Once there, it was only natural that he should 
look on to see how the other members of the section were 
getting along. To his astonishment he saw that three of 
the blackboard workers were demonstrating the problem 
exactly as he had done it on the sheet of paper that had 
disappeared ; copying it precisely, with the x plus y error 
and all ! 

On a bit of paper torn from his scratch pad Larry 
jotted down the names of the men who were apparently 
copying from the lost sheet, and that evening, after sup- 
per, he asked Dick if he knew the names of the Freshmen 
who had already been pledged to the Zeta Omegas. 

“Sure I do,” was the ready reply. “There are seven 


70 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


of us. Got a list somewhere. Here she is : I’ll call ’em 
off.” 

Without explaining anything, Larry took out the list 
he had made in class and checked it silently as Dick read 
from his list. It came out exactly as he thought it would ; 
the three men whose names he had written down were 
among the pledges to the Omegs. The double mystery 
of the disappearance of the faulty demonstration, and its 
reappearance in three separate places on the blackboards, 
was solved. Lansing had merely pocketed the solution, 
which he supposed was the correct one, and had given 
it to at least three of the Freshman pledges to his own 
fraternity. 

It was altogether in keeping with Larry’s make-up that 
he did not explain his reason for wishing to know the 
names of the Omeg pledges; that Dick’s query as to what 
he was driving at should be given a “turn-off” answer. 
But the incident revived all those earlier and antagonistic 
questionings about the fraternities. Twist and turn it 
as he would, he couldn’t make Lansing’s action square 
with his own ideas of fairness. 

But he was not quite fair himself in charging the act 
of one fellow up to a whole fraternity, or rather to fra- 
ternities as a whole — though this he did not realize. As 
he summed it up, it amounted to just this : if any member 
of a frat was able to “get by,” all the other members could 
get good marks without working for them; which, when 
you come to look at it, was putting a part for the whole 
with a vengeance — arguing a suit of clothes from a small 
bunch of wool on the sheep’s back, as you might say. 

He did not go so far as to say that the incident would 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


71 


determine his action when, or if, the bid should be made. 
Nevertheless, it did set him balancing again on the fence 
of indecision. But, after all, it was little Purdick who 
gave him the push in the direction in which he was finally 
to fall. 

It was two evenings later, and Purdick was the only 
drop-in; with Dick gone out somewhere, as was coming 
to be his nightly habit. After the seance with the trigo- 
nometry, which was Purdick’ s bugbear, the handicapped 
one sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind 
his head. 

4 ‘I’m making the most of you while I can, Donovan,’ * 
he said, with a tight-lipped smile. “When you hitch up 
with the Omegs I’ll lose you.” 

“Who said I was going to hitch up with the Omegs?” 
Larry demanded. 

“Oh, I don’t know just who said it; such things always 
get around.” Then: “I’m sorry.” 

“What makes you sorry?” 

“A lot of things that I have no right to say to an Omeg 
pledge.” 

“I’m not a pledge — not yet.” 

“You mean that I’m free to say what I please?” 

“Sure you are. That is one of the privileges of this 
shop.” 

“You’ll say I’m prejudiced, and maybe I am. But you 
must remember that I’m a year older in Sheddon than you 
are. I don’t condemn the frats as a whole ; some fellows 
are just naturally joiners, and I suppose they can’t help 
it. But this particular frat, or at least the Sheddon chap- 
ter of it, stands for everything that I despise, Donovan. 


72 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Two-thirds of the men in it are rich men's sons, and the 
pace they set is pretty swift. Last year they lost four of 
their pledges— -canned and sent home." 

“Why were they canned?" 

“The faculty reason was that they fell short of class- 
work requirements. But the reason why they fell short 
can be jammed into one word — dissipation. Oh, you 
needn't look so horrified; it was what they, and all their 
world, would call ‘gentlemanly' dissipation; a little card- 
playing for money, a little drinking, occasional mid- 
night suppers over in town — that sort of thing." 

“Do you mean to tell me that the faculty lets things of 
that kind go on, in a frat or out of it?" Larry demanded. 

Again little Purdick's smile was thin-lipped. 

“Sheddon isn’t a training school for wayward youth, 
Donovan ; it’s a college for men. Prexy will tell you that 
the faculty refuses to assume responsibility for your 
morals ; that your character is supposed to be established 
before you come here. And he’ll probably add that your 
behavior off the campus will show up in your class mark- 
ings, and that if these fall below the dead line — as they 
will if you run with the fast set — you’ll be sent home." 

“Short and sweet," Larry commented with a grin. 

Purdick was silent for a time. Then : “I’m sorry for 
another reason, Donovan. I thought you were one of 
us." 

“How do you mean?" 

“You are a workingman, and the son of a workingman. 
You ought to stand with your class." 

“But if I don’t believe in ‘classes’ ?" 

“You’ve got to believe in them, because they are . You 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


73 


can gloze it over all you want to, but that doesn’t change 
the fact. You’ve got to take sides, whether you want to 
or not.” 

“I don’t see it that way at all,” said Larry stubbornly, 
meaning that he was beginning to try mighty hard not to 
see it that way. 

“You’d better see it. You’re here for the same thing I 
am: that’s to get an education. If the doing of it is go- 
ing to make you over into the kind of fellow that’s 
ashamed of his folks and the way they live and have to 
live — ” 

“That’ll be about enough of that kind of talk, Purdy,” 
Larry exploded. “I’m not built that way.” 

Little Purdick closed his eyes. 

“All right ; we won’t argue about it. But I'll take you 
on another tack. You may not know it, but you’ve al- 
ready got a following here. I guess it began when you 
pulled the ’Varsity out of the hole in the Rockford Poly 
game; anyway, you’ve got it. If you really believe what 
you say — that there isn’t any such thing as ‘classes,’ or 
oughtn’t to be — it’s up to you to do the biggest thing that’s 
ever been done for Sheddon. But you’ll lose the chance if 
you go into a frat.” 

Larry shook his head. “You’ve got me a mile over my 
depth, now, Purdy. What are you raving about ?” 

Purdick went on, still with his eyes closed. 

“I can see you getting a bunch of the fellows — regular 
fellows — around you in a frat that would be a frat in the 
sure-enough meaning of the word ; a sort of brotherhood 
that wouldn’t know either rich or poor or anything else 
but just the college fellowship. I can see the thing grow- 


74 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


ing and growing, until after a while even the Greek Let- 
ters themselves would see the beauty of it and help it 
along. I . . he stopped suddenly and sat up with 
a bitter little laugh. “Forget it!” he broke out harshly. 
“I take spells like that sometimes when I’m not responsi- 
ble for what I say. Good-night,” and he was gone. 

For some little time after Purdick went away, Larry 
sat with his chin propped in his hands, the good gray 
eyes staring at the opposite wall and seeing nothing. Once 
more he was stumbling around in the valley of indecision. 
What Purdick had said about being loyal to his clan — the 
work-for-wages clan to which his father and all of his 
people belonged — had stirred up all the old questionings. 
Was it true, what Purdick had asserted, that college, or 
the fraternity and social side of it, would turn a fellow 
against his own people? Larry couldn’t believe it; and 
yet . . . 

That was the moment of all moments when he had to 
remember Monty Brown, Montmorency Haliburton 
Brown — to give him all of his name. Monty was the son 
of the Brewster night engine-hostler, and a little money 
left by a great-aunt for that particular purpose had taken 
Monty to an Eastern college. Larry had a sudden mental 
flashlight picture of Monty Brown’s return to the bosom 
of his family for the long vacation the summer before; a 
be-tailored, be-barbered thing, smelling of pomatum, con- 
temptuous of his good, honest, workaday family, and hold- 
ing himself far too dandified to associate with his old 
school- fellows of the Brewster High. Was it possible 
that college could do such a thing as that for him — Larry 
Donovan? He set his teeth hard upon a resolve to turn 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 


75 


his back squarely upon every influence that even threat- 
ened to lean that way. 

Purdick’s little pipe-dream — about the big frat which 
shouldn’t be like the exclusive Greek Letters — he dis- 
missed at once, though not without seeing what a chance 
it would offer for some real leader to do a fine thing for 
the “left-outs.” But he had the good sense to see that 
this was no job for a green Freshman, however popular 
he might be. It would need the prestige of an upperclass- 
man — a Junior, at least — and even then it might have a 
hard row to hoe. 

Notwithstanding the fact that his decision was now 
finally taken, it was a good bit of a trial to convince Dick 
that it was his job to tell the Zeta Omegas that, for rea- 
sons that needn’t be gone into, Freshman Larry Donovan 
did not wish to be considered as a candidate for fraternal 
honors. Of course Dick argued, painstakingly, almost 
pathetically. Being fully committed himself, he could see 
only one side of the argument, and he was convinced that 
Larry was throwing away his one best college chance. 
But Larry stood firm. 

“It’s your everlasting ‘workingman’ prejudice, Larry!” 
Dick flamed out at the last. “You’d rather stand alone 
than come in with a bunch of fellows who have nothing 
against them except that, perhaps, some of them won’t 
have to work with their hands for a living when they get 
out of college!” 

“Call it that if you want to,” said Larry; and he turned 
to his books with a frown and a sigh. He knew, of old, 
that it was no use to argue with Dick, and it was costing 
him something to realize that they had come to a parting 


76 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


of the ways ; that the time was at hand when they would 
no longer be chums in that intimate chumminess which 
had held unbroken from the time when they had sat across 
the aisle from each other in the grade school at home. 

A few days later the fraternity initiations — postponed 
that year rather beyond the usual period — began, and 
Larry saw numbers of his fellow classmen, Dick among 
them, doing all sorts of absurd and ridiculous “stunts” at 
all hours of the day and night; saw them and passed by 
with a grin in which there was a bit more than a tincture 
of good-natured contempt. 

Next came the parting, when Dick packed up his be- 
longings and moved them over to the big frat house op- 
posite the campus portal on the other street. This was 
a sort of sorry business, as it was naturally bound to be, 
but of the two, Larry carried off his part of it rather bet- 
ter than Dick did. 

“Have you made up your mind yet what you’re going 
to do?” Dick asked, as he was jamming the last of his 
things into his trunk and sitting on the lid to make the 
hasps catch. 

“About the room, you mean? Mrs. Grant says I can 
keep it alone, but I know she can’t afford that.” 

“I feel like a yellow dog, dropping out on her this way 
when it’s too late in the year for her to make other ar- 
rangements,” Dick said, getting up to stand on the trunk 
lid. 

“It’s all right with her — that part of it,” Larry offered, 
“though, of course, she’s sorry to lose you.” 

“Not half as sorry as I am to go.” 

Larry let out a cheerful bray and called it a laugh. 


77 


DICK’S DROP-OUT 

“Can’t eat your cake and have it too, can you? But I 
guess you needn’t worry about Mrs. Grant. I expect 
she’s used to having the frats swipe her star boarders, long 
before this.” 

There was the sputtering chuckle of a motor truck in 
the street below, a clumping of heavy boots in the hall, 
and then the voice of Mrs. Grant telling the expressman 
which room to go to. Dick knelt before his trunk to lock 
it — which gave him a chance to turn his back upon his 
room-mate. 

“I didn’t mean Mrs. Grant, altogether,” he mumbled; 
then, twisting about suddenly, with the queerest look on 
his face that Larry had ever seen there: “You mustn’t 
drop me, Larry — just because I’m going into the Omegs. 
I-I don’t believe I could stand for anything like that.” 

It was just here, with the expressman tramping along 
the upper hall and looking for the door to which he had 
been directed, that the warm Irish Donovan blood came 
to the fore. 

“Don’t you lose a minute’s sleep about that, Dickus!” 
he burst out, dropping into the use of the old school-boy 
nickname. “They say that blood’s thicker than water, but 
there are some other things just about as thick as blood. 
We’ve knocked around together too long to let a little 
thing like a frat dig a ditch between us now. When you 
need me I’ll be right there with both feet. Don’t you 
forget that.” 


V 


THE RED-WAGON SCHOLARSHIP 

I ARRY’S parting word to Dick had been altogether 
^hearty and cheerful, as we have seen; but after the 
parting had settled down into a fact accomplished, Larry 
spent some pretty lonesome evenings. Not because there 
wasn’t company enough ; there is always plenty of that in 
any college boarding-house, to say nothing — in Larry’s 
case — of the lame dogs that came straggling in to get a 
boost over the mathematical hill. But an evening roomful 
of more or less hilarious and racketing fellows isn’t every- 
thing; and after the crowd broke up there was always 
the empty chair on the opposite side of the study table, 
and Dick’s bed, made up and never slept in, to remind 
Larry of his loss. 

Meanwhile, theie was Mrs. Grant to be considered. 
After a week had gone by without any move having been 
made to put anybody in with him, Larry cornered the 
motherly person one afternoon in the lower hall and asked 
her about it. 

“If you could find somebody you’d like to room with, 
of course I’d be glad,” said the house-mother. “But I 
don’t like to ask you to put up with a stranger.” 

“You know of somebody?” Larry asked. 

“Yes; there is a young man here taking post-graduate 
work for his Master’s degree. He’s in the Chemical, and 
he’d like to come.” 


78 


THE RED-WAGON SCHOLARSHIP 


79 


Larry had an instantaneous and rather disquieting pic- 
ture of himself rooming with something worse than an 
upperclassman — a man who had already been graduated, 
who was probably working against time, and who would 
be likely to object most strenuously to the lame dogs and 
other visitors. 

“Will you let me look around a little and see if I can 
find somebody first ?” he asked; and the reply was as 
kindly as his own mother could have made it. 

“Certainly I will. Mr. Agnew seems to be a very pleas- 
ant gentleman, but he is at least ten years older than you 
are, and on that account . . . as I say, if you can find 
somebody you’d like to room with — anybody you’d pick 
out would be all right with me.” 

Larry fairly ducked at the mention of the “Chemical’s” 
age. That would settle it for fair. Why, good goodness 
— a fellow that old would have forgotten all about his 
undergraduate days and what he did himself when he was 
in the braying stage. 

“I’ll look around,” said Larry hastily, and made his 
escape. 

That evening, when there were half a dozen fellows in 
the room, Larry noticed again a thing he had been notic- 
ing for a week or more; which was the fact that little 
Purdick had stopped coming to the Man-o’-War — that he 
hadn’t shown up since that evening when he had outstayed 
the others to say his say about the frats and the classes 
and masses. 

Also, Larry, trying to hammer the proper method of 
working a trig, problem into Ollie McKnight’s not any 
too mathematical head, was conscious of a duty unfulfilled. 


80 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


He had been meaning to look Purdick up and had neg- 
lected doing it. 

“Hey, Belcher !” he called to a fellow stretching himself 
lazily on the bed that used to be Dick’s, “have you seen 
anything of Purdy lately? He’s in your section.” 

“Nary a rag,” said the lazy one. “Dried up and blown 
away, I guess.” 

McKnight looked up from his figuring pad. 

“Friend o’ yours, Donnie — this Purdy person?” he 
asked. 

“Sure,” said Larry. 

“Ump. He’s having one fine, large, tough time, so the 
fellows tell me. Flunked out last year Freshman and had 
to take the work over. Nothing much to him but grit, but 
he’s got a peak load o’ that. Works in Hassler’s to keep 
going, but I haven’t seen him there for a week or so. 
Darned shame a fellow like that can’t get a little boost 
over the humps, I’ll say. If Old Sheddon had any heart 
she’d have scholarships, or something, for ’em.” 

Larry let Purdick drop for the remainder of the ses- 
sion; but the under-thought, that he’d been neglecting 
something, kept trotting along just the same; that, to- 
gether with the “flop-around,” as he was calling it, of 
one Ollie McKnight. From something that had been 
mighty nearly a snob at the beginning of the year, the 
son of Consolidated Steel was actually thawing down into 
a human person with decencies and sympathies a good 
bit like those of other fellows. That word about the 
Purdicks just now, for example. 

At the half-past-nine-o’clock dispersal, when the room- 
ful went straggling out by ones and twos, McKnight was 


THE RED-WAGON SCHOLARSHIP 


81 


still working on his final trig, problem. When he finished 
it he stretched himself luxuriously in his chair and stuck 
his hands into his pockets. 

“Once more I can face Old Figures without batting an 
eye,” he exulted. Then: “You're all kinds of a decent 
chap, Donnie.” 

“Don't I know it?” Larry grinned. “But I’m not as 
decent as I might be. If I were, I'd have looked Purdick 
up before this time. Maybe he’s sick.” 

“Still worrying about that poor little rat, are you? I 
don't wonder at it, if he's a friend of yours. He needs 
somebody to worry for him.” 

“I wish I could worry to some good purpose, Ollie.” 

“Money?” said McKnight. 

“If I had it — yes. I’d like to stake him for his course. 
Some of the fellows can romp their way through on the 
work-out track and it doesn’t hurt 'em. Purdy’s got the 
nerve for it, but that's about all he has got.” 

For a long minute McKnight sat trying to balance his 
pencil, end up, on one finger and apparently giving his en- 
tire attention to the accomplishment of the impossible feat. 
When he spoke again it was to say : “Donnie, once upon 
a time I was low-down enough to call you a 'mucker' : 
you're not one, but I am.” 

“I don't get you,” said Larry, and he meant it. 

“I can mighty nearly put it into words of one syllable. 
I’m nineteen years old, Donnie, and up to date I can't 
remember that I've ever done one single thing for any- 
body but Ollie McKnight — that is, nothing that has cost 
me anything.” 

“Well, perhaps you haven't had to.” 


82 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“That’s it; I haven’t. It’s been Dad’s money, ever 
since I can remember. If I wanted to throw a few dollars 
to the birds, I threw ’em — and got some more where they 
came from. It didn’t cost me anything.” 

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” said Larry, mean- 
ing only to save the confider from possible future em- 
barrassment. 

“Don’t you go and trig the wheels,” McKnight put in 
quickly. “I’m not often taken this way, and it’ll do me 
good to unload and get it out of my system. What you 
said about little Purdy a few minutes ago — that you’d 
boost him through if you had the money — snagged me 
good and hard.” 

“How was that?” 

McKnight dug into a pocket and fished out a letter. It 
was typewritten on a Consolidated Steel letterhead, and 
he folded it over until he came to a paragraph near the 
end. 

“Listen to this, and you’ll see what I mean,” he said; 
and then he read from the letter : “ ‘So you want a new 
car to enable you to cut a dash with the college boys and 
girls, do you? I was sort of hoping, Son, that your 
break into Old Sheddon would make you understand that 
there are some other things in the world besides having a 
good time, but it seems it hasn’t. But it’s all right with 
me. I’ve put two thousand dollars to your account in the 
college town bank, and you may buy a car with it — if 
that’s what you want more than anything else. But I 
should have been a pretty proud Dad if you’d wanted the 
money for something besides a plaything that you’ll wear 
out in a year.’ ” 


THE RED-WAGON SCHOLARSHIP 


83 


“Well?” said Larry, when McKnight refolded the let- 
ter and put it back in his pocket. 

McKnight didn’t answer the implied query. Instead, 
he put one of his own. 

“How far would two thousand dollars go toward 
boosting little Purdy through his four years, Donnie?” 

“How far? — Great cats! it would take him all the way 
through. It’s as much as, or more than, I expect to spend 
in the four years!” 

“All right,” said McKnight coolly. “I’ll write you a 
check for it when I get back to the house.” 

“But see here — good goodness, Ollie, you can’t do any- 
thing like that!” Larry broke out. “In the first place, 
Purdy won’t take it — no fellow would ; and in the next — ” 

“Let’s knock the pins down in one alley before they’re 
set up in another,” cut in the offhand maker of scholar- 
ships. “Of course, one of the conditions would have to 
be that Purdy doesn’t know where it comes from. We’ll 
call it the Red-Wagon Scholarship, and let it go at that.” 

“But even then, he’d consider it a loan and want to pay 
it back.” 

“You can’t pay a scholarship back. But that’ll be all 
right ; if he ever gets fixed so he can, let him pass it along 
— boost some other fellow who needs it. You may as 
well quit chucking hurdles in the way, Donnie. This is 
the first time I’ve ever given anything that’s cost me some- 
thing, and you can’t choke me off. Besides, I’d like to 
shock Dad — just this one time, you know. I’d give a 
hen worth fifty dollars if I could be there to see, when he 
gets the news.” 

“Then you won’t buy a car?” 


84 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Not so you could notice it — not this year, anyway. 
When you come to think of it, it isn’t good form for a 
Freshie to be daddlin’ around in a little red wagon any- 
how. Which reminds me that it isn’t good form for me 
to stay daddlin’ around here and keeping you out o’ bed. 
So I’m gone.” 

“Hold on a second and I’ll go with you,” said Larry, 
reaching for his cap and overcoat. 

“Whichward ho, at this time o’ night?” questioned the 
son of much money, as they went out together. 

“I’m going to see if I can find out what’s become of 
Charlie Purdick,” Larry returned. And at the parting 
moment: “Sure you won’t change your mind, Ollie, 
after you’ve slept on it?” 

“Don’t you worry. I’ve got a lot of weaknesses, Don- 
nie, but that isn’t one of ’em. You go find Purdy.” 

“I’m gone,” said Larry ; and he turned down the cross 
street, while McKnight swung off in the opposite direc- 
tion. 


VI 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 

EING well used to Colorado mountain winters, Larry 
had been finding the Middle- Western variety of the 
season rather a joke than a hardship thus far. But on the 
night when he parted from the founder of the Red-Wagon 
Scholarship at Mrs. Grant’s front gate, old Boreas was 
outdoing himself. 

Down Maple Avenue, cutting across angling behind the 
athletic field, the wind came howling straight out of the 
shivery northwest, bringing with it a storm that was half 
snow and half a fine sleet to sting like needles on a bare 
face, and to make the sidewalk as uncertain underfoot as 
the bottom of a soapy bath-tub. 

It was only two squares down to the main street of the 
college suburb, and then one more to Hassler’s restaurant, 
where Larry made his first inquiry about Purdick. Here 
he learned nothing except the fact that Purdick hadn’t 
shown up for a week and more, and that another student 
waiter had been put on in his place. The big, puffy- 
lipped German didn’t know where Purdick roomed, but he 
thought it was over Heffelfinger’s grocery, two squares 
farther down. 

Thither Larry posted, slipping and sliding over the 
treacherous sidewalks, and was lucky enough to find 
Heffelfinger just closing his grocery shop. Yes, Purdick 
§5 


86 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


had a room “oop-shtairs” — two flights up. Larry blun- 
dered into the box hall beside the grocery entrance and 
climbed — in darkness so thick that it was almost sticky. 
But there was a window in the second floor hall, and 
enough light from the street electrics filtered through its 
grimy panes to enable him to find the second stair. 

Groping along on the third floor, which seemed to be a 
sort of junk room, Larry made his way toward a thin 
thread of light coming from the crack under a door. The 
barn-like third floor was cold with the deadly chill of a 
shut-up space that has never been heated, and Larry had 
all he could do to keep his teeth from chattering. At the 
door with the chink of light under it he rapped, and a 
hoarse voice that he hardly recognized said : “Come in.” 

Larry wasn’t any more impressionable than he had to 
be, and wasn’t at all troubled with the sort of imagination 
that adds frills and furbelows to make a thing you re- 
member grow into a sort of cold horror the more it is 
dwelt upon. Yet he thought he should never forget the 
desolate cheerlessness of the cubbyhole into which the 
opening door admitted him. 

It was a bare little place, roughly board-partitioned off 
from the storehouse attic and lighted — in daytime — by a 
single window which was now rattling in its frame and 
letting a thin sifting of fine snow blow through the cracks. 
For furniture there was a pine packing box for a table, 
another which had been made into a sort of chair, and a 
third for a light stand on which stood a guttering candle. 
In a corner, with its head beside the light-stand box, was a 
cot, and propped up in the narrow bed, with a coat over 
his shoulders, the blanket pulled up to his chin, and his 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 


87 


copy of “Hun and Maclnnes” held so that the light of 
the candle would fall upon the page, was Purdick. 

“Hello, Donovan !” he croaked in the same hoarse 
voice that had said “Come in.” “Dug me up, did you? 
Pull up the easy-chair and sit down” — this last with a grin 
that was more than half ghastly. 

Larry dragged out the box chair and sat by the cot. 
But he didn’t take off his overcoat, or even unbutton it. 

“Been meaning to dig you up for a week or more,” he 
said. “Why didn’t you let some of us know you were 
sick?” 

“Didn’t want to be a nuisance. I’m getting over it all 
right, now.” 

“What was it?” 

“Touch of the grippe, I guess. I had it last winter. I 
don’t mind it so much, only I’m afraid it’s cost me my 
job at Hassler’s.” 

Larry looked around at the cheerless, unheated cubby- 
hole. 

“Gee!” he shuddered, “this is no place to be sick in. 
Why didn’t you report to the hospital ?” 

Little Purdick’s smile was another of those half- 
ghastly grins. 

“I don’t mind telling you, Donovan. Your three-dol- 
lar-per-semester hospital fee, that you have to pay when 
you register, entitles you to two days sick-a-bed in a 
ward. If you stay over that time it’s a dollar a day extra. 
I didn’t have the dollar a day.” 

“Well, you’ve got to get out of this,” said Larry; and 
he said it gruffly because the pitifulness of Purdick’s case 
was getting next to him. “You’re going to room with me 


88 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


for the rest of the year. Dick’s gone over to the Omeg 
house and I’m needing a bunkie.” 

Purdick wagged his head on the blanket pillow. 

“I know you don’t mean to stick a knife into me and 
twist it round, Donnie, but you know very well that I 
can’t afford to go to Mother Grant’s. Let it slide and 
help me out a bit on this trig. — if you can stand the cold. 
I’ve lost a week on the stuff, and if I can’t make it up 
I’ll go bust on it.” 

“You chuck that book and listen to me,” growled Lar- 
ry. “I say you’re going to room with me in the Man-o’- 
War, and what’s more, you’re going to begin it to-night — 
if I can find a night-owl auto hack anywhere this side of 
Chicago.” 

“But I tell you I can’t, Donnie. It’s as much out of my 
reach as — as — ” 

“That’s all fixed,” Larry put in brusquely. “Your room 
rent’s paid, and your board, too ; or they will be.” 

“But listen, you good old scout; I can’t take charity 
that way — you know I can’t. It — it would break me, 
world without end!” 

“It isn’t charity ; it’s a — scholarship,” Larry stammered. 

“Sheddon hasn’t any first-year scholarships, Donnie. 
You know that as well as I do.” 

“Maybe it hasn’t had; but it’s got one now — just — er — 
founded. One of the fellows— er — knew of it so he nailed 
it for you.” 

“Donnie, you’re lying to me ; you know good and well 
you are,” protested the sick one. “You’re meaning to put 
up for me yourself— out of money that you told me your- 
self was borrowed money. Isn’t that the truth?” 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 


89 


Larry managed to force a sort of donkey-bray laugh. 

“Much obliged for the compliment, Purdy, but I’m not 
so generous as all that amounts to. I told you it wasn’t 
charity, and it isn’t. It’s a sure-enough scholarship, and 
it runs for four years. After that, if you make a go of 
your profession, you’re to pass it on to some other fellow 
that needs it. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?’’ 

Pur dick turned his face to the wall and for a long min- 
ute there was silence in the freezing little room. When 
he spoke again there was something more than the grippy 
hoarseness in his voice. 

“I — I can’t take it in, Donnie,” he stammered brokenly. 
“I’m a perfect fool about this engineering course. I’ve 
wanted it ever since I knew what engineering was — 
wanted it so bad that I could taste it. The — the home 
doctor said I could never stand it to work my way through, 
and I guess maybe he was right. And now — ” again he 
turned his face to the wall, and because it is a shame for 
one fellow to see another one cry, Larry jumped up and 
went to shiver at the rattling window. 

When he thought he had given Purdick time enough to 
sort of get a grip on himself, he went on to the business 
part of his errand. 

“Think you’re not too sick to stand the trip over to the 
house if I get a flivver and wrap you up good?” 

By this time the little fellow was able to grin again. 

“If it’s any colder out doors than it is up here, it must 
be going some,” he replied. 

“It’s a rough night, just like it listens,” said Larry, 
“but we’ll make it, all right.” After which he groped his 


90 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


way out and down the two pairs of stairs and went to look 
for an auto cab. 

That proved to be some hunt. There wasn't a vehicle 
of any kind in sight on the college-suburb side of the river, 
and he had to go creeping and slipping over the bridge and 
into the town proper before he could find one. He dis- 
covered one at last, and had a wrangle with the driver 
because the man said he didn’t need tire chains and Larry 
insisted that he did; kept on insisting until the hackman 
grumblingly consented to put them on — with Larry to 
help. 

When he got back to the cubbyhole under the Heffel- 
finger flat roof he found Purdick dressed and sitting on 
the edge of the cot. The sick one got up and wabbled 
around as if he were going to strike right out by himself, 
but Larry said: “Nothing doing; mamma’s baby hasn’t 
learned to walk yet,” and without more ado, wrapped the 
invalid in a blanket, stuck the candle in his hand so that 
he could light the way, and then gathered him up and 
carried him, catching his breath when he found what a 
feather-weight Purdick was, either from the sickness or 
from not getting enough to eat. 

After Larry had bundled his arm-load into the hack, 
the short trip was made safely, though the machine 
skidded some, even with the chains on. Larry had taken 
time, while he was over in town looking for the auto, to 
telephone Mrs. Grant what he was meaning to do, so 
when he staggered up the steps with his burden, the good 
house-mother was at the door to meet him and help him 
get Purdick upstairs and into the bed that had been Dick’s. 

A few minutes later she came trotting up with a pitcher 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 


91 


of hot milk and made the new room-mate drink two glasses 
of it. After she went away, Purdick wanted to talk; 
wanted to know more about the scholarship, and who the 
fellow was who had grabbed it off for him, and if it was 
really true that he didn’t have to work for wages any more 
during the three-and-a-half years he hoped to stay in Old 
Sheddon. But Larry resolutely squelched him and told 
him to go to sleep, threatening to turn the lights off and 
run away to Welborn’s room to study if he wasn’t obeyed. 
So once more little Purdick turned his face to the wall; 
and a half-hour later, when Larry went to bed, the grippe 
patient was sleeping peacefully, and Larry, giving him the 
once over before he put the lights out, could fancy that a 
good half of the strained look had already gone out of 
the thin, colorless face. 

This was the beginning of Larry’s experience with a 
substitute for Dickie Maxwell in the big upper room at 
Mrs. Grant’s. With the best of care, and plenty of good 
food, Purdick was soon up and around and at work in 
his section. Naturally, it took a good bit of boning to 
make up for the lost time, but since he didn’t have any- 
thing else to do, didn’t have to worry about rent and 
board and such things, he soon worked off the temporary 
handicap. 

Matters went along quietly for three or four weeks 
before anything more was said about the “scholarship.” 
On the day following Purdick’s transfer to the Man-o’- 
War, Ollie McKnight had given Larry a check for the 
two thousand dollars, and with it Larry had opened an 
account in the college bank in the name of Charles Pur- 


92 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


dick, got a pass-book and a check-book and put both of 
them where Purdick could find them. 

So far, so good. After Purdick got up and out, he 
paid his few debts and his delayed second semester dues, 
moved his scanty belongings over to Mrs. Grant’s, and 
apparently settled down to the new order of things with- 
out trying to find out anything more about his miraculous 
windfall. But Larry knew that the day of reckoning was 
only postponed, and it came one evening after the room 
had been cleared of the latest stragglers and its two occu- 
pants were left alone together. 

“Now, then, Donnie,” Purdick began, “I want to know 
something more about this 'scholarship’ thing. And first 
let me say that I know now that it isn’t a scholarship.” 

“But it is, in a way,” Larry insisted. 

“Not officially,” said Purdick. “There’s no record of 
any such thing in the books. I’ve asked the Registrar.” 

“Good gracious!” Larry exclaimed, seeing trouble 
ahead ; “why can’t you let well enough alone ?” 

“Because, as I said that night when you came to hunt 
me up, I can’t take anybody’s charity.” 

“Poor but proud, eh?” said Larry, knowing well 
enough that he would have felt exactly the same way in 
Purdick’s place. 

“You can call it that if you want to; I guess it’s the 
truth. But I want to know ; I’ve got to know.” 

“I’ll tell you all I can — which isn’t so very much,” 
Larry temporized. “The money was given to one of the 
fellows here to — er — do as he pleased with. He didn’t 
need it for himself, so he took a notion to give it to you — 
lend it to you, if you’d rather have it that way. Only 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 


93 


instead of paying it back to him, he wants you to boost 
some other fellow, by and by, when you’re able to do it.” 

“That’s all right, as far as it goes. But who is the 
fellow?” 

“I can’t tell you. I’ve promised.” 

Little Purdick twisted himself in his chair and seemed 
to be looking out of the window, though the panes pre- 
sented nothing but a blank wall of darkness. Finally 
he said: 

“I guess I’m up against it pretty hard, Donnie.” 

“How so?” 

“Can’t you see? You know the way I’ve always talked; 
what I’ve been thinking and saying about rich people. 
Nobody but some one of the rich fellows could do what’s 
been done to me. Can I take a bone that’s been thrown 
to a dog?” 

Larry grinned. 

“That depends, doesn’t it? Of course, if you’re call- 
ing yourself a dog ” 

“Say it all,” Purdick prompted. 

“I don’t know how to say it so as to make anybody 
understand it. But this is the way it looks to me. If 
you do something for somebody that needs to have it 
done for ’em, you get a whole lot of satisfaction out of 
it, don’t you? Makes you feel sort of warm and com- 
fortable all over, doesn’t it?” 

“Of course; everybody knows that.” 

“Well, if you’re going to be able to jolly yourself over 
the giving part of it, somebody else will have to do the 
taking, won’t he?” 

Purdick took time to think about it. Trying to be 


94 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


perfectly honest with himself, he had to admit that he 
had never looked at it in just that way before. But 
poverty pride — especially when it is backed up by a lot 
of prejudice — is a pretty stubborn thing. 

“If you won’t tell me anything, how am I going to 
know that this isn’t rotten money I’m spending?” he 
demanded. 

“What do you mean by ‘rotten money’ ?” 

“Money that’s been sweated out of a lot of poor people 
who couldn’t help themselves.” 

Larry shook his head. 

“I can’t go back that far, Purdy — and I don’t think 
you ought to. The money’s doing a good job now, what- 
ever it did before it came to you.” 

“But I think you might at least tell me who gave it. 
Supposing it happens to be somebody that I’d rather die 
than take it from? There’s a bunch of just such fellows 
here in Sheddon.” 

“Don’t you lose any sleep about that. When the thing 
was put up to me, I asked myself just one question, and 
that was if I’d take it if that same fellow offered it to 
me and I needed it. That question sort of answered 
itself. I’ve got a lot of that same poverty pride myself, 
Purdy, but I’d have done it in a minute, if only for one 
reason ; I could see that it was going to be the best thing 
that ever happened to that fellow to give it.” 

“And you won’t tell me his name?” 

“I can’t; that was the one thing he made me promise.” 

“Am I never going to know it?” 

“That’s up to him. And he’s right about that, too. 
What you don’t know needn’t worry you, and you don’t 


A NEW ROOM-MATE 


95 


have to feel under any obligations. Now, let’s get to 
work on this descrip. It’s pretty stiff for to-morrow.” 

It was perhaps a week beyond this talk, one evening 
when Larry was putting on his coat to go over to the 
Micrometer office with his athletic notes, that Purdick 
looked up from his book to say: 

“Seeing much of Dickie Maxwell these days, Donnie?” 

Larry shook his head. As a matter of fact, he had 
been seeing far too little of Dick since the Zeta Omegas 
had taken him in. For the first week or two Dick had 
dropped in at the Man-o’-War every evening or so. But 
the “drop-ins” had grown farther and farther apart as 
time went on, until now they had stopped altogether. 

“No, I don’t see him very often, except on the cam- 
pus,” Larry admitted. “What makes you ask?” 

“It’s none of my business,” Purdick went on rather 
hesitantly, “but he’s running with a pretty rapid bunch. 
Did you ever hear of the 'Mixers’ ?” 

“No; what is it?” 

“It’s a private club, and it meets over in town. That 
ought to tell you all you need to know about it.” 

“It doesn’t.” Apart from athletics and his job on the 
Micrometer, Larry knew little of what went on outside of 
his classroom work. 

Little Purdick was staring at the darkened window; a 
habit he had when he had to say something that he didn’t 
want to say. And what he said didn’t explain much — 
except by inference. 

“We can give the frats credit for one thing, anyway,” 
he remarked. “They don’t allow card-playing for money 
in the houses.” 


96 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Gee !” said Larry, with a gasp ; “are you trying to tell 
me that this 'Mixer’ thing is a gambling club?” 

“That’s what you hear whispered about it.” 

“And Dick Maxwell belongs to it?” 

“I’m afraid he does. Anyway, he runs with that sort 
of a crowd.” 

“I don’t believe it — I can’t believe it, Purdy!” said 
Larry; but when he left the house a few minutes later to 
breast his way through a softly falling snow to the news- 
paper office on the other side of the river, he knew that 
his last word to Purdick had been more of a hope than a 
conviction. 


VII 


IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT 

M ARCH at Old Sheddon, which had come in like a 
lion, was promising to go out like a lamb. By the 
middle of the month the snow was all gone and the ath- 
letic field was beginning to dry out enough to let the 
teams get a little outdoor work. 

Keeping up his job as athletic reporter for the student 
daily, Larry was always on hand when there was anything 
doing on the field, and as soon as Coach Brock began to 
organize the teams and squads, he was given a chance to 
train for the next year’s ’Varsity foot-ball. 

Ordinarily, you’d say, any fellow would jump at a 
chance like that, coming while he was still in his Fresh- 
man year, and Larry, who had all along been hoping he 
might make the team, was ready enough to jump. 

“If you think I’m good enough,” was the way he took 
the bid; and after Brock, who never coddled any of his 
men, had said he would probably grow to be good enough 
if he worked hard, Larry left the field feeling about three 
inches taller than any self-respecting measuring machine 
would have recorded his stature. One of the ambitions 
he had begun to cherish, as soon as he had acquired a little 
of the “college spirit” that Dick Maxwell had tried so 
hard to hammer into him at the beginning of the year, 
was to make the ’Varsity foot-ball, and all through the 
97 


98 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


year he had been hoping that Coach Brock wouldn’t for- 
get the November game with Rockford Poly and the part 
in it that one Larry Donovan had taken. 

Little Purdick, who had an almost uncanny knack of 
face-reading, knew instantly what had happened as soon 
as Larry entered their joint room in the Man-o’-War. 

“So Brock has picked you, has he?” he said, as Larry 
flung his cap and dropped into a chair. “Where’s he 
playing you?” 

“I don’t know,” said Larry; “I guess it will be right 
half. That’s the job I know best.” 

“Tickled purple, I suppose?” put in Purdick with his 
queer little grin. 

“You’ve said it, Purdy; hits me right where I live. 
It’s going to take a lot of time, but I’d rather sit up nights 
than miss it.” 

“I’ll help you all I can in the ‘boning,’ ” Purdick of- 
fered, out of the depths of a loyalty to his big room-mate 
which had been steadily growing ever since the night 
when Larry had bundled him in blankets and carried him 
down two flights of stairs to chuck him into the hired 
auto. “You must turn all your copying and problem 
drawing over to me. I can do ’em just as well as not.” 

“You’re a pretty good little old rat, Purdy, and I’ll 
lick the fellow that says you’re not. Has Dick been 
over ?” 

“Not since last night, after you’d gone to the ‘Mike' 
office.” 

“Did he say he wanted to see me for anything par- 
ticular?” 

“No, he didn’t say much of anything; just asked for 


IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT 


99 


you, and then mooned around a bit with his hands in his 
pockets and went away.” 

Knowing well Purdick’s peculiar gift for reading faces, 
Larry pushed the inquiry farther. 

“You’re pretty good at guessing what’s in the back part 
of a fellow’s head, Purdy. Was there anything the mat- 
ter with Dick?” 

“If you ask me, I’ll say there was. He looked mighty 
sober — for him.” 

Larry hung upon his heel, so to speak. Though he 
had had a number of invitations, he had never yet set 
foot inside of the Zeta Omega house. Should he go and 
look Dick up? At this time in the evening he would 
probably be in the frat house. Larry thought he’d better 
go over. For old times’ sake, if for nothing else, he 
might take that much trouble. 

It was just coming on to dusk when he left Mrs. 
Grant’s, and as he was unlatching the gate a slender figure 
with its head down and its hands in its pockets came 
along the sidewalk. 

“Dick!” exclaimed Larry; “I was just going over to 
the Omegs’ to hunt you up.” Then, as he got his first 
good look at Dick’s face: “Great cats! — what under the 
sun have you been doing to yourself ?” 

Dick turned his face away. 

“Would you — would you mind taking a little hike with 
me, Larry?” he asked. 

“Sure I won’t; it’ll seem like old times. Which way?” 

Dick set the direction and the pace without saying 
anything. The course led out Maple Avenue to the coun- 
try road leading to the bridge whose portal arch bore in 


100 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


figures two feet high the numerals of their class. For 
the entire mile they tramped along side by side in silence. 
Dick did not speak, and Larry, borrowing something 
from that manhood which he was just touching on its 
hither side, respected his companion’s silence. 

It was quite dark when they came to the bridge, though 
there was a slender sickle of a new moon hanging a few 
degrees above the western horizon. The bridge approach 
was guarded by a low concrete wall, and when they 
reached the wall Dick sat down on it. 

“You haven’t had your supper yet, I know, and I won’t 
keep you very long,” he said in a sort of strained voice. 
Then he went on : “I — I’ve brought you out here to tell 
you good-bye, Larry. I’m canned — sent home.” 

“What!” Larry almost shouted the word. 

“It’s so. One of the profs. — Morton, he was kind of 
sorry for me, I guess — gave me a hint yesterday. That’s 
why I went around to Mother Grant’s last night to try to 
find you. I got the faculty letter to-day.” 

“But, Dick — what on top of earth have you been do- 
ing?” 

“The letter says it’s something I haven’t been doing — 
keeping up with my classroom work. But that’s only a 
part of it, and not the worst part, either. You see, Dad’s 
a Sheddon old-grad., and they’re trying to let him down 
easy.” 

“What is the worst part of it, Dick?” 

“Don’t you know?” the canned one asked, in the same 
dull monotone. 

“No more than the man in the moon.” 

“Didn’t you ever hear of The Mixers’?” 


IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT 


101 


“Just the name; that's all.” 

“Well, you might as well know ; it's all out now. There 
was a bunch of us, with more money than was good for 
us, I guess. We’ve been going over the river to a room 
in the Brandon House to play cards. Night before last 
the town police raided us. The others all skipped through 
a window and down the fire-escape, but I was bonehead 
enough to stand my ground and try to bully it out. For 
the sake of the college it was kept out of the newspapers, 
and the police contented themselves with handing me over 
to the faculty.” 

“And you’re the only one to be expelled?” 

Dick nodded. 

“They gave me a chance that I couldn’t take; said 
they’d make it suspension to the end of the semester if 
I’d tell who the others are. It’ll just about break Dad’s 
heart, Larry.” 

“Don’t you know it,” said Larry, with a franker em- 
phasis than he meant to put upon it. Then : “Have you 
told it all?” 

“No ; not quite all. I’ve lost money — lots of it. I owe 
pretty nearly everybody in sight. Worse than that, I’ve 
used up all my year’s allowance and I’m overdrawn at the 
bank. I’ll have to wire Dad for money to get home on.” 

For a few minutes Larry was just about as badly 
crushed as Dick seemed to be. That Dick, the chum he 
loved almost as a brother of his own blood, should make 
such a frightful smash of himself and his prospects in 
just a few weeks or months seemed utterly unbelievable. 
Then there was Dick’s father. . . . Just here Dick broke 
in again. 


102 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“You mustn't charge it up to the Omegs, Larry; that's 
one of the things I got you out here to say to you. I know 
some of the fellows in my frat are pretty swift, but I 
was the only one that was in the 'Mixers.' It’s only fair 
to say that Carey Lansing and some of the others have 
done all they could to hold me down and keep me from 
getting tangled up with fellows of the Underhill sort. 
But it didn’t do any good. I was just an easy mark, all 
around the block.” 

“1 could have held you down,” Larry maintained, with 
his jaw set. 

“Yes, I guess you could have. But I never gave you 
a chance to try.” 

Larry sat quietly for a few minutes, kicking his heels 
against the concrete wall. This was the time of day when, 
ordinarily, nothing would have kept him from thinking 
of his supper. But now he was not remembering that 
there were any such things as suppers. 

“What will you do after you get home, Dick?” he 
asked, more to be saying something than for any cogent 
purpose behind the words. 

“I don’t know ; get Dad to give me a clerkship or some- 
thing on the railroad, so that I can earn money enough to 
pay my debts. I’ve had my fling and I’m out of it for the 
rest of my life.” 

If you are a little older than Dick you may smile at 
this, if you like, but it was the end of the world for him, 
or he thought it was — which amounts to the same thing. 

“Does that mean that the fight’s all out of you?” Larry 
asked. 

“Golly, I'd fight if I didn’t have just sense enough left 


IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT 


103 


to know that I’m down and out. Eve taken the count, all 
right.” 

‘‘Let’s see if you have. What would you do if you had 
a chance to stay here and live it down, Dick ?” 

“What would I do? I’d black the shoes of the fellow 
who could tell me how it could be done. But it can’t be 
done. I’m fired, I tell you.” 

“Wait a minute,” Larry put in. “Supposing the faculty 
could be persuaded to reconsider. Whereabouts would 
that leave you ?” 

Dick gave a wry little laugh. 

“It would leave me wondering where I was going to 
get the next meal. Didn’t you hear me say that I’m broke, 
and head over ears in debt besides?” 

“How much are you in debt ?” 

Dick named a figure which wasn’t so crushingly big, 
though it doubtless seemed as big as the National debt to 
a fellow with only a few silver coins left in his pocket. 

Larry made a swift mental calculation. Without in- 
tending to be especially economical, he had lived well 
within the amount set apart for his first-year expenses, 
and he still had a comfortable balance in the college bank; 
in fact, there was something more than enough to pay 
Dick’s legitimate debts. But there were three months of 
the semester left, with board and lodging for two to be 
provided for. 

“Supposing you didn’t have to quit and run for it, 
Dick,” he suggested, “would you stay on in the Omegs?” 

“No; I’ve disgraced the fellows good and plenty, and 
the least I can do now is to get out.” 

“I’ve just been thinking,” Larry went on, unconsciously 


104 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


using a phrase that he’d copyrighted the summer before 
on the railroad job in the Timanyoni Mountains. “I’ve 
money enough in the bank to pull you out of the hole, 
but there’ll be nothing left to live on.” 

“Oh, good gorry, Larry — do you think I’d let you do a 
thing like that?” Dick burst out. “Besides, can’t you get 
it into your head that I’m fired, canned, sent home in dis- 
grace?” 

“Oh, yes; I’m remembering all that. But I’m still 
thinking. You said this thing would break your father’s 
heart, and we mustn’t lose sight of that. Here’s what 
comes next. Gorman, in Prac. Mechanics, has lost his 
assistant, and two weeks ago I was offered the job. So 
far as I know, the chance is still open. With that, I could 
earn enough money to—” 

There was the best reason in the world why the sen- 
tence broke itself short off in the middle of things. Up 
to that moment Larry had clean forgotten the great event 
of the afternoon, when Coach Brock had backed him into 
a corner of the locker-room in the gymnasium to tell him 
that if he’d promise to work hard on the practice field 
there would be a place for him on the next-year ’Varsity. 
If he should become Gorman’s shop assistant for the re- 
mainder of the semester, that would settle foot-ball prac- 
tice, and every other outside activity, for good and all. 
There would be time only for work, study, eating and 
sleeping. If he didn’t hesitate, it was chiefly because he 
was afraid to hesitate. 

— “Could earn money enough to keep us both,” he fin- 
ished, with a little gulp to come between. “We’ll call that 
part of it settled.” 


IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT 


105 


“Like a fish we will !” Dick rapped out, jumping down 
from his place on the wall. “What do you take me for, 
anyway, you soft-hearted old geezer? Do you suppose 
I’d let you mortgage yourself that way when you’re 
booked for next year’s ’Varsity? Oh, yes; I knew all 
about it before it happened. Not in a month of Sundays, 
Larry Donovan, and don’t you forget it! Now then, 
climb down off that wall and let me walk you back to your 
supper. I’ve made my little bleat, and that’s all there is 
to it.” 

In a silence that was even thicker than the outward- 
bound one, they retraced the mile of county road, and at 
Mrs. Grant’s gate Dick went straight on down the street 
with only a brief “Good-night” for his hike companion. 
But a little later that same evening a muscular, square- 
shouldered fellow with curly red hair might have been 
seen pressing the bell-push rather timidly at the door of 
the President’s house on the opposite side of the campus ; 
pressing the button gently and looking a bit shocked or 
awed or something when the door swung suddenly open 
to admit him. 

Some half-hour later the red-headed one was thinking 
most pointedly of this door again, only this time he was 
eager to pass through its portal the other way. A mid- 
dle-aged, sober- faced gentleman in scholarly black had 
risen from behind a huge table littered with books, in a 
room that was walled and plastered with more books, to 
shake hands with him at parting. 

“You’ve made out a strong case, Donovan,” the presi- 
dent was saying. “It was principally your friend’s stub- 
bornness that made the faculty take drastic action, but 


106 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


you are quite right in suggesting that we should recognize 
a sense of honor, even when we find it in bad company. 
If Maxwell is really in earnest — and after what you have 
told me I can hardly doubt it — I think I can promise you 
that we shall be willing to review his case — with a rec- 
ommendation to mercy. Come and see me again, when 
you have time and opportunity. You will always be wel- 
come.’ J 

So, when Larry left the big house in Chestnut Street, 
he was walking upon thin air, and the crisp, starlit, late- 
in-March night seemed to sing for him as he strode along. 
And at the western portal of the campus he did not go 
aside to take the short cut across to Mrs. Grant’s. In- 
stead, he broke another precedent and turned his steps 
toward Main Street and the house of the Zeta Omegas. 


VIII 


HOW LARRY CHANGED HIS MIND 

TTST HEN an “outer barbarian” goes to a college fra- 
" " ternity house the first time, he is quite likely to be 
rehashing a lot of weird ideas about the secrecies, grips, 
passwords, gauntlets to be run at the door, and things of 
that sort. So Larry Donovan, ringing the bell at the door 
of the Zeta Omegas, had made up his mind that he 
wouldn’t try to break in; he’d just ask whoever might 
open the door to send Dick out to him. 

But things didn’t break that way at all. It was Wally 
Dixon who did the door-opening, and when he saw who 
it was standing on the step he stuck out a ham-like hand. 

“Donnie, you old knock-’ em-out, put ’er there!” he 
bellowed. “Had to sneak around and get into a little 
good company, after all, didn’t you? Tumble in and be 
at home : fellows ’ll all be glad to see you.” 

“I want to see Dick Maxwell,” Larry began, when he 
was once safely within the sacred precincts. 

“Private and personal?” Dixon queried; adding: “I 
suppose you know poor old Dickie’s in mourning just 
now?” 

“I know all about it,” said Larry. “That’s why I’m 
butting in. I’ve grabbed off a bit of good news for him.” 

“What’s it like?” Dixon asked. “The house is all 
broke up about Dick.” 


107 


108 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“I’ve just been to see Prexy. Dick’s going to have an- 
other chance.” 

“Why, you bully old stick-in-the-mud!” roared Dixon. 
“We sent a delegation to Prexy this morning, but it didn’t 
get anywhere, just because we’re Dick’s frat brothers, 
and it was expected that we’d leg for him as a matter of 
course. What did Prexy say?” 

“Said the faculty would review Dick’s case — with a 
recommendation to mercy.” 

“Glory be ! that means that he won’t have to go home. 
Come on and I’ll chase you up to his room. He’s pack- 
ing up, right now.” 

Dixon was right. When Larry was pushed into an up- 
stairs room of the fine old country-town mansion that had 
been remodeled into a fraternity house he found Dick on 
his knees before an open trunk. Dixon merely shoved 
Larry into the room and then backed out and disappeared. 
Dick squatted back on his heels and said, “So you broke 
in, did you? I thought maybe you’d come around to 
see me disappear over the horizon.” 

“Hold up a minute,” gasped Larry breathlessly. “Have 
you wired your father?” 

Dick shook his head. 

“Not yet; I’ve been putting it off — like a coward. 
Wally Dixon has staked me to enough to get home on. 
I thought I’d rather tell Dad face to face, but I can’t do 
that, either. The faculty letter ’ll get there before I do.” 

“Dick,” said Larry, and he tried to say it casually, and 
couldn’t, “the faculty letter isn’t going to your father. 
You’re to have another chance.” 

For a time Dick didn’t speak or move; just squatted 


HOW LARRY CHANGED HIS MIND 109 


there on the floor with his hands locked over his knees and 
with queer little twitches coming and going at the corners 
of his mouth. After a bit he managed to say : “How do 
you mean? — another chance.” 

Rapidly, because he couldn’t trust himself to go at it 
deliberately, Larry told of his interview with the presi- 
dent, and of the president’s promise to “review” Dick’s 
case. 

“You’ll be conditioned, and you’ll have to make up your 
class-room work,” he went on, “but we can pull you over 
that hill all right. And he told me that the letter hadn’t 
been sent to your father. I guess he was just as sorry 
about having to send it as you were about having it sent. 
They think a lot of your father here in Old Sheddon, 
Dick.” 

Slowly Dick got upon his feet, crossed the room, and 
sat upon the edge of his bed. 

“For a minute or so you got me all ‘hope up,’ Larry,” 
he said soberly. “Goodness knows, I want to stay bad 
enough, but I can’t. I won’t ask Dad for any more money, 
and it’s a cinch that I’m not going to let you go to work 
in Prac. Meehan, and lose out on foot-ball, just to put 
up for me.” 

“Now see here,” Larry was beginning; but just then 
there was a rap at the door and half a dozen of Dick’s 
house brothers, Carey Lansing among them, came string- 
ing into the room to drape themselves around on the dif- 
ferent pieces of furniture. 

“We know all about it, Dick,” said Lansing without 
preface. “Wally Dixon has spilled the beans all over the 


110 DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 

place. Here’s how — with the Sheddon series for this red- 
headed pal of yours.” 

Dick rose to the occasion manfully. 

“You fellows are all right; you always have been, to 
me. But I’ve got to go home, just the same.” And then, 
with his jaw set, he made a clean breast of everything, 
telling about his debts and winding up with Larry’s offer, 
— which he wasn’t going to accept — and with his own 
intention of kicking himself out of the Zeta Omegas. 

“Like Zeke you will !” said Lansing. “Also like Zeke 
you’d let Donnie side-step his chance on the ’Varsity and 
take on as an instructor to split with you. What do you 
think you’re one of us for, anyhow? The house will or- 
ganize a corporation and stake you — you ought to know 
that much, little as you know about other things. And 
next year you can bone down and save your nickels and 
pay it back. What’s the matter with that?” 

Dick’s mouth was twitching again. 

“There’s nothing the matter with it, except that you’re 
a lot of dad-beaned, in forgotten, turkey-trodden easy 
marks,” he said, hiding his real feelings under a mask of 
brotherly abuse. “I’m not worth saving.” 

“Of course you’re not, ’’.said Lansing, retorting in kind. 
“We all know that. We’re not doing it for you; we’re 
doing it for the sake of getting at least one good man on 
the ’Varsity next year. See?” 

Larry Donovan’s emotions, as he sat by listening to this 
give-and-take, and Lansing’s offer, were considerably 
mixed. At first, you see, he had been charging Dick’s 
downfall chiefly to his association with the Zeta Omegas, 
and when Dick had wiped that charge off the slate, he had 


HOW LARRY CHANGED HIS MIND 111 


still managed to hang on to some of his old prejudice 
against the fraternities. He had even gone so far as to 
wonder if the bunch wouldn’t willingly turn its back upon 
a member discredited and kicked out of college in dis- 
grace. But here was a spirit altogether human and beau- 
tiful; good, man-sized loyalty that didn’t seem to care a 
rap whether Dick’s father had a million or a mere pit- 
tance. 

The occasion — and Dick’s evident balance on the raw 
edge of a breakdown — seemed to call for a diversion, and 
Larry made it. 

“See here, Lansing — and the rest of you,” he broke 
in, making himself the target, instead of Dick, “I’ve been 
holding a pretty savage grudge against you Greek-Letter 
fellows all the way along, and I want to take it back. 
You’re just white folks, like the rest of us, after all.” 

“Much obliged,” returned Lansing gravely; and then, 
to Larry’s utter astonishment: “You can’t put one over 
on me like that, Donnie, and get away with it. You 
know, and I know, why you’re not a member of the 
Omegs, right now. The name of the reason is Old Prob- 
lem Seven-fifty- four. It was a low-down trick for me to 
swipe your demonstration sheet that night back yonder 
in January, and I’ve been ashamed of it ever since.” 

For a minute Larry was too astounded to answer. That 
the head of a fraternity chapter and a Senior should make 
such open and frank amends to an outsider and a Fresh- 
man was almost incredible. But he contrived to find his 
tongue after a bit. 

“I guess maybe I stood up so straight that I leaned 
over backwards,” he said. “Besides, I was prejudiced, 


112 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


and I never was much of a ‘joiner.* Let’s call it an even 
break and let it go at that. I’ve got to hand it to you 
fellows for the way you’re standing by Dick, and you can 
bet I’ll do my part. Now I must get out; I’ve got a 
whole descrip, assignment to work off before I turn in.” 
And he went while the going was good. 

Partly because he thought Purdick needed it, Larry told 
the story of the evening’s happenings, after he got back to 
the upper room in the Man-o’-War. But little Purdick’s 
prejudices in the matter of the classes and masses were too 
deeply ingrained to be removed by a single instance on 
the other side of the ledger. 

“Of course they’d back him to stay,” he offered. “It 
would give them a bad black eye if he had to get out in 
disgrace. What they’re going to do is only a matter of 
sel f-preser vation.” 

“Purdy,” said Larry, as he got out his drawing-board 
and settled down to his descriptive geometry, “there are 
times when you make my back ache, and this is one of 
them. Got your trig. ? All right ; you go to bed and get 
out of my way. I’m due to crowd about two days’ work 
into the next hour and a half.” 


IX 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 

*Tp HE spring which was approaching at the time when 
A Dixie Maxwell so nearly fell over the edge of things 
was one which will be long remembered in the river valleys 
of the Middle West. During the winter there had been 
heavy snows, well distributed over vast areas, and after 
the winter was over, the storms continued, only they 
turned into soaking rains to patter incessantly upon all 
roofs and to flood the ditches on all roads, making each 
little ravine and hollow in the land contribute its small 
torrent to the rising rivers. 

It was at the close of the third day of steady rain that 
Larry came back from his reportorial trip to the Microm- 
eter office dripping like a wet umbrella. 

“Woosh! some little old spell of wet weather, I’ll say!” 
he exclaimed, stripping off his rain coat and disappearing 
for a moment while he hung it over the tub in the bath- 
room. 

“River still rising?” asked Purdick, when Larry came 
back. 

“About a mile a minute, you’d say. It’s up within a 
few feet of the bridge deck right now. They’re saying, 
over town, that the railroad bridge won’t stand it.” 

“The Main Street bridge will go first,” Purdick pre- 
dicted. “Last year, one time when the water was low, 
you could see the bottom of the piers sticking out like toes 
113 


114 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


out of a broken boot. Looked to me as if they weren't 
founded upon anything but the sand and gravel.” 

“If the Main Street bridge goes out it will take the 
railroad bridge with it,” said Larry. “In the Chronicle 
office they told me the wires are down in every direction 
and the whole country’s in trouble.” 

“We’ll get it here, too,” asserted Purdick, who seemed 
to be full of gloomy forebodings. “This town was 
flooded once before, away back in the early days. I’ve 
been listening for the bell ever since you went away.” 

“To call the fellows out? Most of them are out now. 
Fellows who own boats are hard at it, dragging them up 
to higher ground. The boat-houses are all afloat and some 
of them have been washed away. I’m going out again 
as soon as I get my descrip.” 

“I’d go with you if I had a raincoat,” said Purdick. 

“I’ve got an old one that’s too small for me. Pile in 
and get your work up and we’ll take a whirl at it to- 
gether.” 

Following this there was a silent interval of strenuous 
study, while the rain, coming in sheets, hissed upon the 
windowpanes. At the end of it, when Purdick was push- 
ing his chair back and Larry was filling in the last few 
lines of his demonstration drawings, the big clock bell in 
the college tower was booming out its call in the “general 
alarm.” 

“That means us,” said Larry, jumping up and leaving 
his drawing unfinished. “Something’s happening.” 

A few minutes later they were “afoot and afloat,” as 
Purdick put it. The streets were rivers, and in places the 
sidewalks were under water. The college buildings and 


115 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 

suburb, situated upon a reasonably elevated level above the 
river, were out of danger, and so was the greater part of 
the town proper on the opposite side of the river. But 
there were bottom lands on both banks of the stream — 
protected in some measure, to be sure, by old levees — 
which were pretty sure to go under if the flood should 
rise high enough. 

As they pushed on toward the river there seemed to be 
every indication that the flood had already reached the 
danger line. In the darkness — and there were some local- 
ities which the street electrics, which were still going, did 
not reach — people were abandoning the lowland houses, 
many of them hurrying to higher ground with only such 
of their belongings as they could carry in their arms. 
Autos were coming and going in the downpour, and in 
the threatened area a little army of Sheddon men was at 
work, helping the inhabitants to save what they could. 

In the lowest part of the district some of the houses 
were already surrounded by water which had seeped in 
through the old levee ; had seeped in and was now coming 
in faster than ever as the river rose on the other side of 
the embankment. Some of the college men, owning ca- 
noes and row-boats, had dragged them over the levee to 
launch them in the flooded bottom, and when Larry and 
Purdick got on the ground these makeshift ferries were 
doing good work. 

“Great Jehu !” Purdick gasped ; “if that old levee should 
break through it would drown everybody !” 

“Work’s the word!” Larry shouted, whereupon they 
jumped in with the first group of college men they came 
to and went at it. 


116 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


That was the beginning of a pretty strenuous night for 
all concerned. Fortunately, there was a generous supply 
of willing workers, and after getting the people out to a 
place of safety, the salvagers turned in to save such of 
their belongings as could be gotten out of the houses and 
carried up to the higher ground. It was along about mid- 
night that the rising flood put the electric lights out of 
commission, but after that, bonfires were built, and by the 
light of them the salvaging went on as best it could. 

In the confusion Larry soon lost little Purdick, and 
about the time the bonfires were getting themselves built, 
he found himself working with a gang of the Zeta Ome- 
gas captained by Wally Dixon, whose bull-bellow of a 
voice could make itself heard in anything short of a boiler- 
shop. Dickie Maxwell was also in this gang, and Larry 
collared him at once for a team-mate. 

‘That house down yonder by the lumber pile,” Larry 
said, pointing; “the woman that lives in it told me just 
now that she hadn’t saved anything but her children and 
the clothes they stood in. Let’s get one of the boats and 
see if we can find something that’s worth carrying out.” 

“There wouldn’t be much that we could put into one of 
these cockleshell canoes,” Dick returned. “But we can 
go around on the levee and get to the house easy by wad- 
ing a little.” 

That seemed perfectly feasible, so long as the levee was 
still holding, so they ran stumbling along in the uncertain 
light of the fires to the main street, which was on a fill, 
and thus reached the wide embankment bordering on the 
river. Here they had as good a view as the rain and 
darkness permitted of the situation, a view which had 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 


117 


been hitherto cut off by the levee. On the “seaward” side 
of the levee, so to speak, the river was running bank-full, 
a muddy, tumultuous flood carrying wreckage of every de- 
scription, uprooted trees, rafts of fence posts still linked 
together by their barbed wire, the gatherings from stream- 
side sawmills and lumber yards, and now and then a 
chicken coop or some other out-building bobbing up and 
down or rolling over as the strong current laid hold of it. 

Near at hand was the main bridge connecting the col- 
lege suburb with the town, substantial steel trusses resting 
upon stone piers. It was still standing, and was appar- 
ently intact, though the water was up to the level of the 
floor, and the flood was constantly hurling floating drift 
wreckage against it. 

“How about it?” said Dick, with awe in his voice. 
“Think it’ll hold?” 

“Don’t seem as if it could,” Larry doubted. Then: 
“We’ll have to hurry. If the bridge should go, we’d be 
cut off. It would take the levee with it, sure.” 

It was a rather foolhardy thing to do; to risk their 
lives for the sake of a trifling property salvage, but in such 
times of excitement even a pretty level-headed person is 
likely to do things that wouldn’t stand the test of a little 
cool reasoning and good judgment. Hurrying along on 
the inner edge of the wide embankment, they soon came 
opposite the house they had marked from the other side, 
but it was only to find that the seepage lake was already 
lapping half-way up the window openings, and that there 
was no possible chance of saving anything. 

“Hard luck for the poor woman,” said Dick, and then, 
at a great splash and a shudder that set the solid embank- 


118 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


ment trembling under their feet: “Look at that, will 
you?” 

“That” was a huge landslide on the river side of the 
levee ; a gigantic bite taken out of the solid earth a short 
distance from where they were standing. What it meant 
became instantly apparent. With the flood gnawing hun- 
grily in the gap it would be but a short time until the 
levee must be breached and the river would pour through. 

It was a trying moment for the two who stood alone 
on the threatened barrier. True enough, their way of 
escape was still open. All they had to do was to run back 
to the Main Street bridge and so gain the street and sprint 
to safety up the hill to higher ground. But, on the other 
hand, there were people on the lower ground, drenched 
groups lingering in the hope of still being able to save 
something from their dwellings. And on the rising lake, 
paddling to and fro among the slowly submerging houses, 
were a number of the Sheddon rescuers, all unconscious 
of the fate that was reaching for them. 

“Hi, there, you fellows !” shouted Dick, being the first 
to find his tongue, “paddle for it and drive those people 
up the hill ! — the levee’s breaking !” 

The shouted-out warning didn’t do a bit of good. What 
with the crackling roar of the bonfires, the shouts of the 
rescuers, and the growling thunder of the flood, nothing 
short of a steam siren could have made itself heard from 
the top of the embankment. 

“It’s no use !” Larry bawled in Dick’s ear. “They can’t 
hear, and we’ve got to get ’em out of there quick. Come 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 


119 


Running quickly down the inner slope of the levee, they 
yelled the warning to the nearest boat-load. “Levee’s 
going! Get out — get out and warn the others!” they 
shouted, running along close to the water’s edge, and as 
they ran they saw the warned ones turning tail and pad- 
dling like mad for the landward shore, spreading the 
warning as they went. But even so, the pair who had 
started the thing could not have covered the entire area 
if they hadn’t had the good luck to find a stranded canoe 
that had gotten away from its owner and drifted over to 
the levee shore of the flooded district. 

“Here’s what we need!” gasped Larry, fairly falling 
into the treasure-trove canoe. “Grab that paddle and dig 
for it! There are more of the fellows up there among 
those shacks just ahead!” 

As he spoke, a row-boat, loaded to the gunwales with 
refugees and their dunnage and pulled by Welborn and 
another of the Aggies, came through an opening between 
two of the houses. Welborn and his partner had already 
got the warning and were hurrying for all they were 
worth, but they backed water long enough to shout to the 
two in the canoe. 

“All out but a couple o’ the fellows over in that farther 
house. Their canoe’s stove. We hadn’t room for ’em: 
go get ’em !” 

At the word, Larry and Dick dipped the paddles and 
sent their light craft spinning toward the outlying house, 
a story-and-a-half frame with the water already lapping 
over the window sills on the main floor. Approaching it 
from the rear, they saw no signs of the marooned ones. 
As they backed water at the kitchen door another rumbling 


120 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


slump and a splash told them that more of the levee had 
been carried away by the river. Their time was fright- 
fully short, and they knew it. 

“I don’t hear ’em — they must be around in front,” 
Dick jerked out; but when they essayed to paddle around 
the house they found the way blocked by a chicken-wire 
fence. And the precious seconds of time were racing. 

Balked by the fence, they quickly handed the canoe 
back to the rear entrance, and tying it to a porch post, 
jumped out to wade through the open door into the 
kitchen. There was no light save that which came from 
the distant bonfires, and this was partly cut off by the 
half-drawn window shades. The water was over knee- 
deep on the house floor, and Dick stumbled over a floating 
chair. 

“Queer we don’t see or hear anything of ’em,” he said. 
Then: “Maybe they’re up-stairs — sure, that’s where 
they’d be, trying to flag somebody from the windows on 
the street. I believe that’s them you can hear yelling right 
now.” 

The answer to that suggestion, of course, was to try to 
find the way to the upper story, and to do it swiftly. 
Larry laid hold of the knob of the first door that he came 
to, hauled it open against the impending drag of the 
flood, and plunged blindly ahead, with Dick at his heels. 
At the first step both of them lost their footing and found 
themselves floundering in utter darkness and in water 
over their heads. In his haste and excitement Larry had 
opened the door leading to the cellar. 

Since both were good swimmers there was nothing 
much to the plunge but a sudden ducking, and as they 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 


121 


were both soaked to the skin anyway, this didn’t matter. 
But when they groped around and got the cellar stair un- 
der their feet, old Brother Calamity reached out and 
grabbed them. By some twist of the rising flood the cel- 
lar door had been swung to, and there must have been a 
spring catch on it. For when they braced themselves as 
best they could on the steps and tried to open it, it wouldn’t 
move. 

“Gee!” said Dick, with his teeth chattering, “we’re 
trapped right, this time. When the water fills this stair- 
well we’ll drown !” 

Almost as he spoke they heard thumping footsteps on 
the house stair over their heads, followed by a great 
splashing in the room beyond the trapping door. Then, 
quite distinctly, a voice which they both recognized as 
that of the sham “lame dog” who had once taken a 
thrashing at Larry’s hands in Farmer Holdsworth’s stub- 
ble field, shouted : “Come on, Bry ! — here’s a canoe tied 
to the back porch. Bring that sack of swag and hop in.” 
And the splashing stopped abruptly with a double tumble 
into the boat and a quick dipping of paddles. 

“Huh!” Dick shivered; “Bry Underhill and Snitty 
Crawford. And neither one of them stopped to think that 
there might be somebody else needing that canoe. Be- 
sides that, they were looting!” 

“Never mind them,” Larry put in. “We’ve got to get 
out of this trap someway. Brace your feet against the 
wall and hold me while I shove.” 

Dick braced and Larry shoved. There was a tearing 
of screws from their holdings and the door swung open. 
Wading into the kitchen they made their way to the front 


122 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


of the house and got to the porch in time to see their 
canoe, with two swaying figures in it paddling for dear 
life, disappear among the half-submerged houses. 

Larry slipped out of his rain coat and began to get rid 
of everything down to shirt and trousers, and Dick 
quickly followed his example. The flooded area behind 
the levee was now completely deserted, and there was little 
hope that they would be missed and sought for in time to 
do any good. 

“What’d we better do?” Dick asked. “Shall we swim 
for it? Or would it be safer to take a chance with the 
house when it floats off its foundations?” 

They were saved the trouble of making the decision. 
While they were still stripping to be prepared for the 
worst there was an earthquake upheaval somewhere in 
the background, followed instantly by the onsweep of a 
wall of water that toppled the house sidewise from its un- 
derpinning and heaved it over into a street which had sud- 
denly become a seething millrace of mud, water and 
wreckage, and the catastrophe had climaxed. 

Going over it afterward, neither one of them could 
give any connected account of the battle for life into 
which the breaking of the levee had flung them. With a 
thousand chances to one of being overwhelmed in the 
watery avalanche, they clung to one of the porch pillars of 
the overturned house; choked, climbed and clung again 
when the house was dashed against an embankment which 
they took to be the Main Street fill at the bridge end; 
had a passing glimpse of the bridge itself shuddering to 
its fall; were buried and half-drowned once more when 
the approach fill gave way before the onrushing flood; and 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 


123 


finally emerged, gasping, in a tangle of trees, broken 
buildings and floating debris of all sorts caught against 
a barrier which they presently realized was the lower rail- 
road bridge. 

Cautiously, and in darkness that was almost thick 
enough to be felt, and also in momentary fear that this 
second bridge would go out and leave them struggling 
again, they clambered over the floating islands of wreck- 
age, pulled themselves up to the almost submerged railroad 
structure, and groped their way on hands and knees over 
the cross-ties until they found that they were crawling in 
the mud of the mainland. 

Here Dick dropped like a stone, and Larry had to work 
over him for quite a little while before he was able to get 
up and stumble on. Luckily, they found themselves on 
their own side of the river, and by making a long circuit 
over the railroad track, they got back to the college suburb. 

Soaked, bedraggled and thinly clothed as they were, 
they were still unwilling to quit before they had learned 
what the broken levee had done to things. Upon reaching 
the streets of the devastated area; streets now crowded 
with anxious and curious spectators; they found that 
while the levee was gone, the big bridge wrecked, and the 
property damage was immense, there were no lives lost, so 
far as anybody could tell, though there was a spreading 
rumor that two of the college men had been last seen go- 
ing to a house which had been swept away when the levee 
broke. 

“That will b-be us,” shivered Dick, who was too cold 
and tired to be careful of his English. “They’ll find out 
by to-morrow or next week that we didn’t get drowned 


124 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


after all. Let’s go hunt us a place where there is a fire 
and something hot to drink. I’m frozen just about solid.” 

That was the wind-up of the night of catastrophes for 
the “Timanyoni Twins.” But there were consequences 
which were to bear fruit a little farther along. A grateful 
citizenry, appreciative of the good work done in the night 
of peril by the student body of Old Sheddon, held a town 
meeting and voted to erect a much-needed addition to the 
college gymnasium as a sort of memorial. On a bronze 
plate set in the wall were to be inscribed the names of the 
students who had rendered the most signal service, and 
Larry, looking over the blue-prints some week or so 
later with a bunch of the men of his own section in the 
Mechanical, flamed out wrath fully when he saw the names 
of Underhill and Crawford included in the list. 

Neither he nor Dick had said anything about the dis- 
covery they had made in the last of the deserted houses, 
but this inclusion of the two who had taken the canoe 
without a thought for what had become of the man or 
men who had tied it to the porch was the back-breaking 
straw. 

“Fellows,” he broke out hotly, “it’s up to us to see to 
it that two names are taken off of this thing. Underhill 
and Crawford were not helping; they were simply loot- 
ing!” 

If things were always done right end to in this world, a 
charge thus openly made would have been investigated, 
and the guilty ones, if proved guilty, would have been 
punished. But, undergraduate human nature being 
what it is, the charge never got itself formally before the 
faculty or the student council. What did happen was 


IN TIME OF FLOOD 


125 


only a sort of half-measure. A couple of the fellows who 
had heard Larry’s angry accusation were curious enough 
to look for evidences of looting in Crawford’s and Un- 
derhill’s rooms. 

The evidences were not lacking. Since the dwellings 
in the flooded area were those of the poor, there was little 
in them to tempt a thief who would steal for the intrinsic 
value of the things stolen. But both Underhill and Craw- 
ford had that distorted sense of humor which is sometimes 
found in fellows who decorate their rooms with sign- 
boards and other property stolen from their rightful own- 
ers, and among the ornaments in Underhill’s room were 
several framed mottoes in cheap frames, ‘‘God Bless Our 
Home,” “What Is Home Without a Mother,” things like 
that, the very nature of which in such surroundings suffi- 
ciently betrayed their origin. 

So Larry’s indignant charge got itself corroborated in 
the gossip of the campus, and Merkle and two or three 
other sober-minded upperclassmen took it up, with the 
result that the names of the two looters disappeared from 
the drawings of the proposed memorial bronze. 

But there was also another result. Since the truth can 
sometimes bite through the thickest hide, Larry Donovan 
was soon to find that he had made an implacable enemy in 
Old Sheddon. But of that, however, he remained happily 
ignorant for the time being. 


X 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 

3 the season advanced, Larry found that he had his 



hands full, and then some. Havercamp was unwill- 
ing to let him off from his Micrometer assignment, and 
what with that and his studies, and boosting Dick to make 
up the lost standing, and going out with the team every 
time Coach Brock gave it a work-out, there was little 
chance for him to get rusty for the want of something 


to do. 


It was along in these early spring days that Dick had 
to pay for his foolishness — not to call it by any harder 
name. True, Uncle Billy Starbuck, his father’s partner in 
the “Little Alice’’ mine, and his uncle only because his 
father and Uncle Billy had married sisters, sent him a 
birthday check along in April that enabled him to square 
things with his frat brothers who were carrying him along 
financially, but no check, however generous, could buy 
him off on the score of the neglected studies. 

So, at a time when every fellow in Old Sheddon who 
had a drop of good red blood in him was turning out for 
some kind of outdoor activity, and soft skies and budding 
trees and greening meadows were calling so that you 
could almost hear them in your sleep, Dick was boning 
away for dear life, scared stiff more than half of the time 
for fear he wouldn’t be able to make his final passing 
grades, and learning, incidentally, we may suppose, the 


126 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


127 


hard lesson that we all have to learn sooner or later, that 
he who plays must pay. 

“Gosh!” he lamented, one night after Larry had been 
putting him through a regular course of sprouts on some 
of the back work in Math., “I’d been meaning to try out 
for one of the track teams this spring, and now look at 
me — handcuffed to a pencil and a pad, and with my nose 
glued into a book ! Makes me think of old Johnnie Maw- 
ker oiling the train trucks in the Brewster station. Recol- 
lect how he used to grin and show his bad teeth when he’d 
jerk open a housing and prod in it with his hook, and 
say : ‘Shore enough, b’ys, the way of the train’s greaser 
is hard’? How’s the practice coming along? I haven’t 
so much as looked over the fence of the field this year.’ ” 

“We’re doing fairly well. If there’s anything in hard 
work, Brock means to put a good team into the fight next 
fall. Wally Dixon’s coming out fine. I’m mighty glad 
Brock picked him. He’s got all-star stuff in him if he can 
take on a little more swiftness.” 

“Wally’s all sorts of a good fellow,” said Dick, half 
musingly. “We call him ‘The Butcher’ in the house — I 
suppose because his Dad’s in the packing business, but 
that, or his Dad’s money, doesn’t hurt him any.” 

“No,” Larry agreed. “ ‘Dad’s money’ doesn’t always 
spoil a fellow. There’s Ollie McKnight, for example.” 

Dick smiled. 

“Getting rid of a few of the old grouches, aren’t you?” 

“Trying to,” Larry confessed. “But when I run up 
against a fellow like Bryant Underhill it comes pretty 
hard.” 

“Yes, Underhill,” said Dick, and his eyes darkened. 


128 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“He and his bunch of Snitty-Crawford boot-lickers ! You 
give that gang a wide berth, Larry. They’re all bad medi- 
cine, as you and I both have reason to know.” 

Larry sat back in his chair, and the wide-set eyes were 
half-closed. 

“Do you remember, one time last summer when we 
were on the railroad job, I told you I had a bad temper, 
Dick? Well, I’ve got it yet, and a sore of the Underhill 
sort comes as near to getting my goat as anything can. 
You know how he tried to make me ‘bust’ last winter?” 

“Sure I do.” 

“Well, he’s at it again, in another way. He’s trying 
now to get me shoved off the team.” 

Dick straightened up hot-eyed. 

“That’s because you told the fellows what he and Craw- 
ford were doing the night of the flood,” he snapped. “But 
he’d better keep his mouth shut ! I could tell things about 
him that would get him fired out of college so quick it’d 
make his head swim !” 

“Easy, you old firebrand,” said Larry; “you’ve got 
your own quarrel with Underhill on that ‘Mixer’ business, 
but this one is mine, and I’m big enough to fight my own 
battles.” 

“What’s he doing now ?” Dick demanded. 

“Telling lies about me, chiefly. Purdy gets onto every- 
thing of that sort” — little Purdick was out somewhere, 
and the two had the big room in the Man-o’-War to 
themselves. 

“What sort of lies?” 

“Dirty ones. You remember when the Underhill Con- 
tracting Company had a job on the Short Line a couple 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


129 


o l years ago ? Underhill was out there a while that sum- 
mer, stopping at the hotel in Brewster most of the time, 
I guess, and he claims that he found out a lot about me 
and my people. Shubrick had his mother and sister down 
here last week on a visit, and Underhill told Shuby he’d 
better not introduce me ; that I wasn’t the kind of fellow 
he’d want his folks to meet.” 

Dick got up, and his eyes were blazing out of a face 
that was as white as a sheet of paper. 

“There’s a limit to all things, Larry!” he broke out 
furiously. “Do you suppose I could break into Prexy’s 
house at this time of night?” 

“Of course you couldn’t,” said Larry calmly. “Why 
should you want to ?” 

“You know good and well why I want to. Underhill’s 
smashed every rule and every tradition of Old Sheddon 
ever since he first hit the campus last fall. He’s not only 
a boozer and a gambler — he’s a cheat. I stood in for him 
and his crowd that time when the police caught us, and 
mighty nearly got canned for it. But now I’m going to 
tell everything I know !” 

“You’re not going to do anything you say you will,” 
Larry put in, decisively. “As I told you a minute or so 
ago, I can fight my own battles.” 

“Not with that kind of carrion, you can’t,” Dick de- 
nied ; “you’re too open and aboveboard. He’ll do you up 
if you don’t let me kill him off.” 

Any further talk about the Underhill come-back had to 
stop just here, because Welborn came in, wishful to know; 
at what place in the book the English assignment for the 


130 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


next day paused; and shortly afterward Dick took his 
leave. 

Like a regular fellow, Larry tried to forget the Under- 
hill-Shubrick incident ; tried, also, to keep from watching 
his team-mates to see if the lies had spread to the extent of 
making any difference, so far as he could determine, but 
he was wise enough to understand that a practice field 
would be exactly the place in which a bunch of fellows 
wouldn’t draw any hard-and-fast social lines. 

But the dirt-throwing bobbed up again early in May on 
a Saturday when the newly organized ’Varsity was to 
put on a practice game with the Sophomores, and this 
was the way of it. 

As everybody knows, visitors are not usually invited to 
witness the spring training games, but on this particular 
day there were two outsiders, a middle-aged gentleman 
and a girl, in the grand stand, guests of a Senior named 
MacClay, and at sight of the girl Larry was carried swift- 
ly back to a day in the year-before summer ; to a mountain 
canyon scarred and shattered in spots by the ripping of 
dynamite blasts, and to the foot-board of a big locomotive 
gingerly towing two Pullmans up the heavy grade. 

“Remember ’em?” asked Dick, who was by this time 
far enough along in his make-up work to take an occa- 
sional Saturday afternoon off on the field. 

“Sure,” Larry nodded. “Vice-president Holcombe of 
our line and his daughter — the girl who wanted to know 
if my last name wasn’t German.” 

Dick grinned. 

“You’ve got a long memory — for little pin-pricks,” he 
laughed. “Mr. Holcombe is MacClay ’s uncle. He and 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


131 


Bess were passing through in the V-P’s private car, and 
Mac got ’em to stop over. You haven’t met ’em yet, I 
take it?” 

Larry shook his head. “No; and I’m not likely to. 
I’m out here to play foot-ball.” And, as Coach Brock 
put him in just here, he did play foot-ball; played it so 
well that the scattering of more or less enthusiastic stu- 
dent spectators in the stands gave him ear-splitting credit 
by name every time he scored. 

It was after the practice game that MacClay invited 
some of his friends and the members of the ’Varsity to 
come around to the little college inn, “At the Sign of the 
Samovar,” to meet his uncle and cousin; and Dick, who 
was watching things like a hawk hovering over a chicken 
yard, noticed that the team invitation was given to the 
various members individually, and that MacClay dodged 
Larry. Dick’s suspicions were aroused at once, but all 
he did at the time was to ask Larry to come over to the 
Samovar later in the afternoon; did this without saying 
anything about the impromptu reception for MacClay’s 
guests — and without saying anything to MacClay. 

At the appointed time there was a gathering of the in- 
vited ones in the club room of the little inn, with Dick — 
who had naturally been included in the bidding, since his 
father was the general manager of the railroad of which 
Mr. Holcombe was the vice-president — among them. 
Apart from this, however, Dick knew the Holcombes 
well from having spent part of a summer with them at a 
mountain resort in Colorado. 

It was rather early in the reception affair that Bess 
Holcombe got Dick aside to ask him a question. 


132 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Tell me, Dickie,” she said; “who was the ‘Donovan’ 
who was playing at right half and scored so many times. 
Surely he isn’t our Donovan, is he?” 

Dick knew quite well what she meant by the personal 
pronoun possessive. On that never-to-be-forgotten day 
in the mountain canyon less than a year before, the Pull- 
man car, holding only Miss Holcombe, four women and 
the porter, had slipped its brakes for a runaway down the 
grade, and it was Larry’s quick wit and cool courage in 
chasing it with one of the construction engines that had 
saved the lives of the imperilled ones. 

“He is our Larry, all right,” Dick replied. “Didn’t you 
know that he came here to Old Sheddon with me?” 

“There are lots of things I don’t know about him,” was 
the quick rejoinder. “For one thing, I never could find 
out why he ran away that day last summer and wouldn’t 
let us even so much as thank him for saving our lives.” 

“Bashful,” Dick laughed, though he knew very well 
that it was grouchiness and workingman prejudice rather 
more than bashfulness that had made Larry take to the 
woods on that memorable afternoon. 

“Where is he?” the girl asked. “I think I’ve met all 
the other members of the team, haven’t I?” 

“He’ll be over, after a little,” said Dick; and just then 
MacClay butted in and took his cousin away to meet an- 
other group of his classmates. 

It was shortly after this that MacClay took his turn at 
drawing Dick Maxwell aside. 

“You were talking to Bess a few minutes ago : it was 
about Donovan, wasn’t it?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


133 


“Didn’t I hear you say that he was coming here?” 

Dick was beginning to be a trifle nettled. 

“You might have, if you listened in’ hard enough.” 

“Who invited him ?” 

“I did.” 

“Now see here, Maxie; you’re not a dead one, and you 
must have heard the stories that are going around about 
Donovan. For that matter, you come from the same 
town, and you must know what sort of a fellow he is.” 

Dick straightened himself belligerently. 

“You’re just the man I’ve been looking for, MacClay; 
somebody who can tell me precisely the sort of fellow 
Larry Donovan is. It’s just possible that I don’t know; 
I haven’t been acquainted with him more than ten or a 
dozen years.” 

MacClay looked embarrassed. He was a very decent 
fellow in the main, though somewhat inclined to take him- 
self and his own little world a trifle too seriously. 

“I’ll just ask you one question, Maxie: have you any 
sisters?” 

“Yes; two of ’em.” 

“Would you be willing to have Donovan meet them?” 

“Rats! They’re only kids, but, barring the difference 
in ages, he’s known them as long and as well as he has 
me.” 

“And he’s accepted by your people — in your home ?” 

“Of course he is. Why shouldn’t he be?” 

MacClay looked still more embarrassed. 

“There’s a mistake out, somewhere,” he said. “Shu- 
brick was telling me — ” 

“Who told Shubrick?” Dick cut in, 


134 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“Underhill, I believe. The story goes that Underhill 
lived for some time in your home town and knew all 
about the Donovans.” 

“Exactly,” snapped Dick. “Just after the Rockford 
Poly game last fall, Bry Underhill took occasion to black- 
list Larry to a bunch of the fellows for no better reason 
than that his father was a workingman. Larry happened 
to overhear what he said and was going to lick him, but 
the other fellows got in and stopped it. Bry bragged then 
that he’d run Larry out of Old Sheddon, and he tried to 
do it, using Snitty Crawford for a cat’s-paw. Now he 
is trying, in another way, to get him shoved off the team. 
There isn’t a single word of truth in the stories he’s tell- 
ing around about Larry and his people, and I’d be willing 
to bet my next year’s allowance that he never so much as 
heard of Larry until he came here to Sheddon.” 

MacClay spread his hands. 

“Of course, I’m taking your word for it, Maxie, 
straight from the shoulder,” he said, heartily enough. “I 
didn’t want to believe this mess of gossip about Donovan; 
but at the same time, Bess is my only girl cousin, and — 
well, you know how a fellow feels about such things.” 

“Sure I do,” Dick acceded cheerfully. “All I’ll say is 
that you owe Larry something for singling him out as the 
only man on the team that you didn’t invite here this after- 
noon; also, you owe him something for saving Bess’s life 
last summer. You can make a payment on both debts by 
giving Underhill’s lies a bash in the face every time you 
get a chance.” 

“I’ll do it,” MacClay promised, and then Dick went to 
the door to watch for Larry’s coming, knowing pretty 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


135 


well the Donovan disposition to break and run at the 
most remote first view of anything like a social function. 

For the purpose Dick had in mind, it was lucky that he 
was waiting at the door when Larry turned in from the 
street. Having been so carefully ignored in the invita- 
tion-giving, Larry knew nothing about the small “infor- 
mal’ J at the Samovar. But like the war horse in the 
Bible, he scented the battle from afar just about as soon 
as he left the sidewalk, and Dick’s unworded prophecy 
that he would duck and run would have had its fulfilment 
if the watcher at the door hadn’t chased out and grabbed 
him. 

“No, you don’t,” Dick laughed; “I was laying for 
you, you old dodger.” 

“But what is it?” Larry wanted to know. “And where 
do I come in?” 

“By the front door, if you’re asking me. I was afraid 
you’d forget and not come at all.” 

“If it’s some social doings, I wish I had forgotten. 
You know well enough that I’m no earthly good at that 
sort of thing.” 

“I know you’re going to be good at this one. Come 
on in and take your medicine like mamma’s little man.” 
And Larry had to go, because Dick had such a firm grip 
on him that a frantic wrestling match was about the only 
thing that offered any chance of escape. 

Now, with Richard Maxwell, junior, a purpose usually 
held much more than was suffered to appear on the sur- 
face. From the moment at the close of the foot-ball prac- 
tice when he had discovered that Larry was left out of 
the invitation list, he had been plotting like the villain in 


136 DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 

a play, and thus far there had been no hitch. What was 
particularly needed was an audience of sufficient size, and 
this he had secured by taking it upon himself to add 
handsomely to MacClay’s biddings, telling as many of the 
men as he could reach in the time afforded that they owed 
it to MacClay to come around and do honor to his guests. 

Therefore and wherefore it was a pretty well crowded 
club-room that Larry was presently dragged into, and 
Dick didn’t give him a moment in which to cool his heels 
— or his courage. Almost before he knew what was hap- 
pening, Larry found himself shaking hands with a tall, 
well-preserved gentleman with a mop of graying hair 
which looked as if it might once have belonged to a foot- 
ball captain, and the gentleman was saying, evidently 
following up something that Dick had said : 

“So you’re that Donovan, are you? Well, now — this 
is a pleasure that I’ve been promising myself ever since 
last summer. Why did you run away without giving 
us a chance to thank you for the splendid thing you and 
Dick did when our Pullman broke loose?” 

Larry said, “I don’t know, Mr. Holcombe,” which was 
about as near the fact as he could come without going 
into an explanation a mile long, and that probably 
wouldn’t be understood after it was made. 

“I believe you are right,” smiled the tall man ; and then 
he was wise enough, or kindly enough, to steer away from 
that subject and start another upon which Larry was 
much more at home. “I was watching your play this 
afternoon with a great deal of interest. We used to play 
a sort of game that we called foot-ball in my college 
days, and there was a time when I thought I was some- 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


137 


thing of a dabster at it myself. Do you play on the 
’Varsity next year?” 

“If I can make good in the practice.” 

“I guess there is no fear but what you’ll do that,” and 
while the visitor went on talking about foot-ball and the 
tremendous improvements — “differences,” he called them 
— which the game had taken on since his own time, the 
second layer in Dick’s purpose uncovered itself. With a 
deft cleverness all his own, he was contriving to get just 
as many of those present as possible to observe the cordial 
footing upon which the vice-president of the Nevada 
Short Line (no inconsiderable railroad, if you please!) 
was meeting Larry Donovan. And the cap-sheaf to that 
was placed when the great man finally called his daughter 
and turned Larry over to her. 

“I think it is high time you were letting me say ‘Thank 
you,’ Mr. Donovan,” was the way Miss Bessie began on 
him; and there was a dog-like plea in his eyes when he 
blurted out: 

“Oh, say — please don’t ‘Mister’ me; I — I’m just 
‘Larry’ to my friends, and — and ” 

“And we are your friends; you can certainly count 
upon that. But tell me, how did you ever have the nerve 
to chase that runaway car?” 

“Why-ee, I don’t know. I guess it didn’t take so very 
much nerve. You see, it had to be done. The car was 
running away.” 

“Oh! So things that have to be done don’t require 
extra courage. Is that what you’re trying to tell me? 
It’ll take more than the bare saying so to convince me. 
Let’s go somewhere and sit down.” 


138 DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 

Again Dick uncovered that purposeful second layer. 
“You see,” he said to one of the fellows who he knew 
had been carelessly spreading Underhill’s calumnies ; “you 
see how people who really know Donnie appreciate him. 
Bess Holcombe met him last summer out in Colorado, 
you know, and, incidentally, he saved her life on a run- 
away car — no, not an auto — a Pullman on the railroad. 
You couldn’t tell the Holcombes anything against him, 
and get away with it.” 

Oddly enough, after the first few minutes, Larry found 
himself getting along very well indeed with the daugh- 
ter of, perhaps, the richest man he had ever shaken hands 
with. Which was something to Miss Holcombe’s credit, 
too, for she was rather fond of taking “rises” out of 
bashful young fellows. Most naturally, their talk went 
back to that day in the Tourmaline Canyon at first, but 
it got around to more modern things after a bit. 

“You are taking the Mechanical course in Sheddon?” 
the girl asked, when things present had been given a 
chance. 

“Taking at it,” said Larry modestly. 

“And Dickie Maxwell’s in Civil?” 

“He is. His father is a C. E., you know.” 

“Mr. Maxwell is a Sheddon old-grad., isn’t he?” 

“Yes; that is how Dick and I come to be here. It’s a 
good old dump.” 

The girl laughed. 

“If you go on playing foot-ball the way you did this 
afternoon, you’ll put Sheddon on the map,” she said. 
“Where did you learn ?” 

“Brewster High. We had a corking team for a bunch 


AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR 


139 


of kids. I’ll say that much for it if it did have to count 
me in as right half.” 

‘That is where you’ll play on the ’Varsity, isn’t it?” 

“Surest thing you know — if Coach Brock doesn’t find 
a better man.” 

If any one had told Larry one short hour earlier that at 
half -past five that same afternoon he would be talking 
thus chummily with a girl — any girl, let alone Miss Eliza- 
beth Holcombe — he would have taken a chance and called 
that person a hopeless pipe-dreamer. More than that, 
he went on talking with her, and still more, when the time 
came for the guests to go to the eastbound train to which 
their private car was to be attached, he made one of a 
group of Dick’s and MacClay’s intimates who went to the 
station to see them off. 

It was while they were walking together back to the 
college side of the river over the reconstructed Main 
Street bridge that Larry said to Dick: “Did you hear 
what Miss Bess said to me as I was putting her on her 
car?” 

“Asked you to come to see her if you ever came to 
New York, didn’t she?” 

“That was it. I wonder if you could tell me if she 
really meant it.” 

“Meant it? Of course she did. Why shouldn’t she?” 

Larry’s answer was no answer at all, but what he said 
marked a distinct milestone in his changing — and broad- 
ening — attitude toward the moneyed minority. 

“The Holcombes seem to be just ‘folks’ like the rest of 
us,” was his summing up of the plunge into the social 


140 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


amenities; and Dick was wise enough to let the remark 
stand just as it was made. 

That evening Larry went over to the Omeg house to 
help Dick “bone” a little more against some tests that 
were coming. After the work session was over, Dick 
sat back with a quizzical smile and said: “I don’t think 
you’ll have any more trouble with the Underhill lies now, 
Larry — after what happened this afternoon.” 

“Ump,” said Larry. “I’ve been thinking: I guess it 
wasn’t so much of a ‘happening’ as it might have been. 
Didn’t you know that I was the only member of the team 
that wasn’t invited to the Samovar?” 

“Maybe I did.” 

“And you ‘framed’ it so I’d have to meet the Hol- 
combes anyway, even if MacClay didn’t want me to?” 

Dick’s smile broadened into a mischievous grin. 

“What you don’t know won’t ever hurt you one little 
bit,” he replied banteringly; adding, as Larry got up to 
go : “I owe you more than I can ever pay, anyhow. Let’s 
let it go at that. But there’s one other little thing I’d like 
to say. I happen to know that Bry Underhill is perfectly 
savage about the thing you let out on him — stealing those 
mottoes from the flooded house. The next time he takes 
a lick at you he’s going to make it count, if he can. Just 
thought I’d mention it so you could watch out. Night- 
night.” 


XI 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 

OCHOOLS of journalism are doubtless excellent 
^ things in their way, but many a bright young news- 
paperman has had his start in helping to keep a college 
daily “functioning,” so to speak. Beginning with the 
athletic reporter’s job on the Micrometer by writing 
copious columns which the editor usually cut to para- 
graphs, Larry was learning, and Havercamp, who was 
slated for editor-in-chief for the next college year, kept a 
weighing-and-measuring eye on the big, curly-headed 
Freshman who was slowly but surely learning the lesson 
of what ought, and what ought not, to be printed in a 
college newspaper. 

“Ever been in Yellowstone Park, Larry?” Havercamp 
asked, one night in May when Larry had stayed over in 
town to help put the paper to bed. 

“Not yet,” said Larry. “Why?” 

“You remind me of one of the geysers — Old Faithful. 
Goes off at regular intervals and never misses a lick. 
That’s what counts in the long run— even more than the 
brilliant intellect you read about — and don’t often see. 
You can’t write much yet, but you have the knack of 
being able to tell when the other fellow writes right. Do 
you get me?” 

“I guess so,” Larry laughed. “You’re trying to feed 
me up a bit, aren’t you ?” 


141 


142 DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 

“Something of the sort, yes. In a few weeks we’ll 
be electing the editorial staff of the ‘Mike’ for next year. 
Some of the fellows think you ought to run for athletic 
editor. The ‘ Mike’s ’ going to need a ‘steady’ or so next 
year, and you’d fill the bill.” 

“Not good enough,” Larry objected decisively. 

“That’s for the other fellows to say. I think you are.” 

“You ought to have a frat man,” was Larry’s next 
objection. “The fraternities have taken a good deal of 
interest in athletics this year and they ought to be en- 
couraged.” 

Havercamp grinned. He was one of the most enthusi- 
astic fraternity men in Sheddon, and it amused him 
hugely to have a barbarian pointing out that the fraterni- 
ties ought to be “encouraged.” 

“Think we need ‘hoping up’ some, do you?” he 
laughed. “I like your cheek. Is that the best you can 
offer?” 

“The best, but not all,” Larry went on. “I’m willing 
to do what comes my way to keep any of the Sheddon ac- 
tivities going. Just the same, though I don’t know where 
I’m going to land at the end of my four years, I’m 
reasonably sure it won’t be on a newspaper job. Another 
thing is, if I don’t fall down, I expect to be on the team 
next year.” 

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” said Havercamp. 
“Anything else?” 

Larry looked down. 

“Yes. You know it as well as I do, Havvy, that I’m 
not ‘popular’ in any big sense. Fellows on the Microme- 
ter staff ought to be popular.” 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 143 


The managing editor sat back in his chair with his eyes 
half closed. 

“That little thing has puzzled me more than a few, 
Donnie/’ he admitted. 

“But you know it’s so,” Larry persisted. 

“I know that some of the fellows seem to be always 
trying to put you in bad, yes; and I’ve never seen any 
reason for it.” 

Larry thought he knew the reason, but he was close- 
mouthed enough about his own affairs not to wish to talk 
about this particular one. He knew he had earned the 
enmity of Bryant Underhill and his following, and that 
meant the enmity of whatever proportion of the student 
body Underhill and his cronies could influence. 

“I guess maybe there’s reason enough — for the fellows 
who do it,” was all he said in reply to Havercamp’s im- 
plied question; and just then the first copies of the paper 
came up, and they both fell to work scanning these pre- 
liminary “pulls” for last-minute correction of errors. 

“Bry Underhill is one of the fellows who has it in for 
you,” Havercamp resumed, after the “go ahead” order 
had been ’phoned down to the press room. 

“I know it,” said Larry. “At first he was sore at me 
because my father happens to be a railroad man working 
for day-pay instead of a salary. And now he’s got a 
bigger grudge — since Dick and I caught him and Craw- 
ford looting a house for ‘souvenirs’ on the night of the 
flood, and I was brash enough to talk about it.” 

Havercamp shook his head. 

“Underhill’s a bad actor. But because he flings his 
dad’s money around with an open hand and drives a 


144 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


sporty auto and poses as a ‘free and easy,’ he has a fol- 
lowing — such fellows always do have. What I can’t 
understand is how he gets by with the Registrar in his 
classroom record. Nobody ever hears of his doing any 
real work.” 

“There are others, as well,” said Larry ; and as he was 
leaving the little editorial den on the top floor of the 
Chronicle Building to go home: “There are times when 
a fellow is tempted to believe that money — enough of it — 
will buy most anything in this jvorld, Havvy. So long. 
Got to mog over to the shack and get down to brass tacks ; 
couple of tests coming to-morrow.” 

Now, as every one who is familiar with the town of 
which Old Sheddon is an over-the-river part knows, the 
Chronicle Building is well up the hill on the left-hand side 
of the main street, not quite out of the business district, 
but well over in the edge of it farthest from the river. 
Turning west at the newspaper corner, Larry glanced up 
at the clock in the dome of the court-house. Its hands 
were pointing to eleven. 

At the moment the streets were nearly deserted, though 
in the “booze block,” as a certain square well down to- 
ward the river was called, the saloons (now happily a 
thing of the past) were all open and doing, or so it seemed 
to Larry, an unusual amount of late-hour business. 

Since he passed that way nearly every evening on his 
way to and from the Micrometer office, he went on to- 
ward the bridge without paying any attention either to 
the lighted dives on one hand, or to the groups of late- 
hour loafers cluttering the sidewalk on the other. But 
just as he was passing the last of the saloons a man 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 145 


stepped out of a group of three, followed him and touched 
him on the shoulder. Larry wheeled quickly, with his 
muscles hardening themselves ; but the man, a rather bur- 
glar ish-looking fellow k with a week-old beard blackening 
the lower half of his face and a workman’s cap pulled 
well down over a pair of beady eyes, spoke him fair, as 
they used to say in our grandfathers’ time. 

“Name’s Donovan, ain’t it?” said the man, shifting the 
stub of his cigar from one corner of his hard mouth to 
the other, and talking out of the corner thus vacated. 

"It is,” said Larry briefly. Then, quite as briefly, 
“What do you want?” 

The man ignored the question. 

“Young fellow named Maxwell’s a pal o’ yours, ain’t 
he?” 

“He’s my friend, yes. What about him?” 

“LiT too much bug- juice, I reckon,” was the half-leer- 
ing reply. “Somebody ought to knock ’im down an’ run 
’im off home. Thought mebbe youse’d like to know.” 

Most naturally, Larry was just plain horrified. That 
Dick, after his one bad slip and narrow escape, should 
make another that was infinitely worse, seemed utterly 
unbelievable. Then he remembered that for the past few 
days Dick had been blue and discouraged for fear that, 
after all, he mightn’t be able to make passing grades in 
the year-end examinations. Could it be possible that he 
had let his discouragement, which, as everybody had told 
him, was nothing worse than the nervous scare of a 
fellow who has been working his brain a bit too hard, 
drive him into another kind of dissipation? 

All this, as we may figure, flashed through one half of 


146 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Larry’s mind in the few seconds during which he stood 
staring at the slouching bearer of bad news and trying, 
with the other half of the thinking machinery, to deter- 
mine what possible object the man could have in lying to 
him — if he were lying. 

“You must be mistaken,” he said at last. “The Max- 
well you’re talking about isn’t the Maxwell I know.” 

“I guess yes. Anyways, the last I seen o’ him he was 
singin’ an’ hollerin’ f’r youse to come an’ steer ’im home.” 

Larry’s resolution was taken impulsively. There were 
a thousand chances to one that the thing was a hideous 
mistake, but where Dick was concerned he was not will- 
ing to take the one chance. 

“Pitch out and show me,” he said brusquely ; and when 
the man turned back toward the noisiest of the saloons, 
Larry followed him. 

It was at the very door of the noisy place, and just as 
he was about to enter it at the heels of his guide, that he 
ran squarely into a boisterous crowd of Sheddonians 
heading collegeward. Then he remembered suddenly that 
this was the night when Sock and Buskin, the college 
dramatic society, was giving a performance in the town 
opera house. Since, for Dick’s sake, he couldn’t stop to 
explain anything, Larry tried to dodge into the noisy 
place quickly, hoping that he hadn’t been recognized. But 
the hope was a vain one. Welborn, the big-hearted — but 
loud-mouthed and not too tactful — Aggie Freshman who 
roomed at Mrs. Grant’s, was a member of the bunch of 
homing theater-goers, and he saw Larry and bawled out 
a half- joking warning. 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 147 


“Hey, you, Donnie! Come out o’ there! You're on 
the team, and that’s breaking training !” 

Being pretty badly flustered anyway, Larry did the 
worst thing he could have done — dodged again and made 
no answer. And it was not until he was following the 
unshaven loafer into the purlieus of the place that he 
realized fully what his action must have meant to Wel- 
born and the others. 

Welborn’s bawled-out hail had called the attention of 
every Sheddonian in the bunch to the fact that he, Larry 
Donovan, was entering a saloon at eleven o’clock at night 
in company with a fellow who looked as if he might be a 
bank burglar at the very least. And he had ducked as if 
he were ashamed to be seen. As certainly as the autumn 
would ripen little red apples the story would go from 
mouth to mouth, and while a break of that kind might 
pass unremarked in the case of a known member of the 
fast set, it wouldn’t go that way when the one who made 
it happened to be a potential member of next year’s ’Var- 
sity and was supposed to be in training — at least to the 
extent of taking respectable care of himself. 

“Show me where Maxwell is, quick,” he snapped at his 
guide. “I haven’t any time to waste fooling ’round such 
a place as this.” 

“I c’n show you where he was a few minutes ago,” said 
the hard-faced man, leading the way to a row of box-like 
card-rooms in the rear, and at the word he opened the 
door of one of the boxes. 

Larry looked in and saw that the place was empty. A 
single unshaded electric light hung over a round table 


148 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


which, with a few chairs, completed the furnishings of 
the bare cell. The man seemed nonplussed. 

“ ’S queer,” he muttered. “He was in here a liT spell 
ago. Wait a minute and Til dig ’im up f’r youse.” 

Larry’s first impulse was to make a bolt for the street 
and the open air. Every clean-living fiber of him was 
protesting against the ribald clamor of the place, the 
smoke-soaked atmosphere, the sickening, stifling smell of 
liquor and stale beer. But the thought of Dick, and that 
one chance in a thousand that the whole thing wasn’t 
some wretched mistake, held him. Besides, at the com- 
mand to “wait,” the man had shoved him into the little 
room and shut the door; but for that he was rather 
thankful, since it cut him off from the bar-room and its 
noisy occupants. 

Pulling up one of the chairs, Larry sat down to make 
the best of what began to seem like a mighty disagreeable 
job. Naturally, all he could think of, at first, was the 
awful thing that had happened to Dick, and as he dwelt 
upon it, it seemed more and more unbelievable. Surely 
Lansing and Dick’s other friends in the Zeta Omegas 
wouldn’t let things come to such a pass after they had 
seen what a brave fight Dick was making to “come back” 
after his nearly fatal run-in with the Underhill bunch and 
the “Mixers.” Larry asked himself what a frat was for, 
anyway, if it couldn’t lay hold of a fellow who was in the 
dumps and jolly him over the rough places. 

Thinking so hard about these things, it was perhaps 
five minutes or so before he began to realize the breath- 
less, half-suffocating closeness of the little card-room, and 
the stifling alcoholic smell that seemed to be growing 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 149 


stronger the longer he had to breathe it. When he did 
realize it, he found that his head was swimming and his 
eyes were smarting strangely. Starting up to go and 
open the door, the dizziness half overcame him, and in 
trying to sit down again he missed the chair awkwardly 
and almost slid under the table. 

While he was pulling himself up and wondering 
vaguely what had come over him, the door opened a little 
way, and the stubble-bearded man stuck his head in to 
say : “I’ve found out where yer pally went to. Come on, 
an’ we’ll go get him.” 

Larry tried again to get up, and again the nauseating 
vertigo made him see black. “If I — could have a drink 
of — water,” he gasped, and he was dimly conscious of the 
disappearance of the hard-visaged man, and of his re- 
appearance a little later with a glass of water. Little as 
he cared for the opinion of this hard-bitted person, he was 
ashamed of the way his hands shook when he took the 
glass and drained it to the last drop. 

For a minute or so the cold drink seemed to revive 
him, but the effect was only temporary. When he tried 
once more to get upon his feet his legs refused to hold 
him up, and an immense desire to sleep came over him 
like a smothering pall. Struggling vainly against the 
overmastering lethargy, he dropped back into the chair 
and, bending over the table, hid his face in the crook of 
an arm just to rest for a second or so. And that was 
the last he remembered. 

When he next opened his eyes, the low-slanting sun 
was shining in his face, and he was lying on a forkful 
of straw in what appeared to be a deserted cow stable. 


150 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Dazed and bewildered, he sat up and tried to make out 
where he was and how he came to be there. Dimly and 
like the figures of a dream his latest waking recollections 
came straggling back ; the noisy and noisome saloon ; the 
stubble-bearded man who talked out of the corner of his 
mouth ; the stifling atmosphere of the close little room in 
which he had been waiting for the man to return, bringing 
Dick Maxwell. 

When was all this? — how long ago? And was it the 
rising sun, or the setting, that was shining in on him 
through the open stable door ? He pulled out his watch, 
the good old reliable timepiece by which his father had 
once run trains on the home railroad, and which had been 
given to him as a parting gift when he left for college. 
Not once since it had been his had he let it run down; 
but now it had run down, stopping with its hands pointing 
to half-past nine. His jaw dropped. That must have 
been half-past nine in the morning! 

Larry propped his head in his hands and tried once 
more to piece the vaguenesses up into some sort of an 
understandable whole. Was it possible that he had slept 
through half a night and almost all of a day? Suddenly 
it came over him with a shock like a bucketing of cold 
water that this was, or had been, the day for the tests in 
Math, and Physics — and he had cut not only these, but all 
his other classes as well ! 

That shock brought him to his feet with a bound, and 
he was dismayed to find that he was still wobbly and un- 
certain when he stood up, and that he had a headache 
that was worse than any he had ever experienced in his 
healthy, clear-headed life. This started him off on an- 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 151 


other line of speculative wondering. What had happened 
to him in the close little room where he had waited for 
the return of the hard-faced loafer? Was it possible 
that the mere reek of the place had made him so drunk 
that he could sleep eighteen hours on end, and then wake 
up with his head feeling as big as a bushel basket? 

Stumbling out of the cow stable he found himself in a 
part of the town that he had never visited; the poorer 
quarter behind the row of saloons in Main Street. The 
stable, which evidently hadn’t been used for a long time, 
stood in a neglected back lot fronting upon a dirty alley, 
and through the alley he made his way to the street and 
so across the bridge to the college suburb. 

Dodging aside as soon as he had crossed the river, he 
hoped he might be able to reach Mrs. Grant’s and his 
room without meeting anybody he knew. But at the very 
last, as he was turning the final corner, he ran into Dick 
Maxwell and two other members of the Omegs. It was 
Dick who blocked the way and said: “Just been up to 
your room to see if you’d been heard from yet. Coach 
Brock wanted to know where you’d dropped out to. 
Where’ve you been, and what makes you look as if you’d 
been pulled backwards through a knot-hole?” 

Larry steadied himself with a grip on the corner fence 
post, and in place of answering the double question, asked 
one of his own. 

“Where were you at eleven o’clock last night, Dick?” 

Dick’s reply was prompt. 

“Up to about that time I was in the house lounge with 
Cranny and Stillwell here, chewing Physics with them for 


152 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


the test to-day. After that I was hitting the hay for a 
home run in my little downy. Why?” 

“Nothing,” said Larry, and he went on to the Man-o'- 
War gate with a great light beginning to filter through 
the headache clouds. One thing, at least, was clear : the 
stubble- faced loafer had told a lie cut out of whole cloth. 
There had been no Dick Maxwell to be knocked down 
and dragged out and carried home. 

In his room Larry found Purdick working over a 
demonstration drawing, and the small one nearly jumped 
up and flung his arms around the home-comer when he 
saw who it was that had opened the door. 

“Suffering Jehu! I never was so glad to see anybody 
in my life!” he exclaimed, shoving the drawing-board 
back on the study table. Then : “They've had me fight- 
ing mad all day.” 

“Who had?” said Larry, dropping into a chair to get 
back to the old trick of holding his head in his hands. 

“Markley and Dugger, and that bunch. They've been 
telling it all over the campus that they saw you last night 
in a back room at Tat's Place' dead drunk! I tried to 
lick Dugger for saying it, but he carried too big a wallop 
for me.” 

“Huh!” said Larry, looking out between his fingers; 
“that's where you got that black eye, was it? You're a 
mighty loyal little rat, Purdy, and I only wish you’d been 
fighting for something worth while. I was in Tat's 
Place’ last night, and if I wasn't drunk, there was some- 
thing else mighty funny the matter with me. I just 
waked up a little while ago, and my head feels bigger 



Dazed and bewildered, he sat up and tried to make out where 

he was 


















































• 
















■ 




















IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 153 


than a barrel, right now. But what were Markley and 
Dugger doing in Pat’s?” 

“The way they’re telling it, they had been to the Sock 
and Buskin show, and after it was out they stopped in 
the Rookery to get an ice-cream soda. As they were 
passing Pat’s on their way over, some fellow out in front 
told them that there was one of their college bunkies 
drunk in a back room. They say they went in and found 
you lying spread out on a table and so far gone that they 
thought it would be too much of a job to get you home. 
So, with the help of the barkeeper and the fellow who 
had told them, they lugged you out to an old barn in a 
vacant lot and left you to sleep it off. I didn’t believe 
’em, of course. If I had, I’d ’ve gone to hunt you up. 
It’s all a pack of lies, isn’t it? You didn’t drink anything 
in that miserable dog-hole, did you ?” 

“Nothing but a glass of cold water.” 

“Tell me,” Purdick commanded; and Larry told the 
whole story, or so much of it as was clear enough to be 
recalled. Purdick heard him through without interrupt- 
ing, and then, out of an experience that was wider — 
and sadder — than any his big-bodied room-mate had ever 
gone through, he grappled with the mysteries. 

“You say the card-room smelled of alcohol and the 
smell grew stronger : I guess it was meant to. Don’t you 
know that a person can get drunk just breathing the 
fumes of the stuff?” 

“I didn’t know it,” Larry admitted. 

“Well, it’s so. The sawdust on the floor was probably 
soaked for you before you went in. Then, with the door 
shut, you’d soon go off your head.” 


154 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“But, listen — Markley and Dugger say they carried me 
out, and that couldn’t have been very long after I went 
off the handle. Just smelling the stuff wouldn’t make a 
fellow sleep eighteen hours, would it?” 

“No; but the glass of water, or what was in it, probably 
did the rest. You were doped.” 

For some little time Larry didn’t speak. When he 
broke the silence, it was to say: “That brings on a lot 
more talk, doesn’t it, Purdy? Why should those plug- 
uglies at ‘Pat’s Place’ want to fill me up with lies and 
then drug me?” 

“Easy,” said little Purdick. “They were paid to do it.” 

“What! You mean the Underhill push?” 

“It’s beating its way into your head at last, is it ? Bry 
Underhill’s been telling it around again, as he did a month 
or so ago, that you’d never play anything but practice 
games on the ’Varsity — never come back to Sheddon 
after this year. He’s cooked up the proper scheme, this 
time, to knock you out. The story will get around to 
Brock — Undy will see to it that it does get around to 
him — and you know how strict he is about the booze.” 

Again there was a little silence in the big room, and 
at the end of it Larry started to his feet with his fists 
clenched. 

“It was a ‘frame-up,’ just as you say, Purdy,” he said, 
speaking slowly as he always did when his temper was 
threatening to get out of control. “I’ve tried, all along, 
not to be vindictive toward Underhill and his crowd, but 
this thing hits the limit. I’m going after that fellow now, 
and he’ll be the one who won’t come back to Sheddon next 
year instead of me! 


IN WHICH LARRY HAS A HEADACHE 155 

“Now, I want you to do me a little favor. I’m as 
hungry as a wolf, but I don’t want to face the bunch at 
the supper-table to-night. Slip down and see Mother 
Grant and ask her if you can’t bring my supper up to me. 
You can tell her I’ve got a bad headache, and you won’t 
miss the truth by a sixty- fourth of an inch. Skip for it 
while I go to the bath-room and hold my head under the 
cold-water faucet. I want to be able to think straight 
after I get a few calories inside of me.” 


XII 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


TTER little Pur dick had seen Larry put away a 



-LV trayful of supper, which had to do duty for itself 
and two other missed meals, with an appetite that seemed 
to make no account of the left-over headache, he hoped 
Larry would tell him what plan he had in mind for get- 
ting square with Bryant Underhill and his unprincipled 
accomplices. 

But there proved to be nothing doing in that line. With 
the supper despatched, Larry hurled himself upon his 
books after the manner of a fellow who has lost a whole 
day out of his calendar and is determined to make it up 
in the shortest possible interval of time. And when Pur- 
dick went to bed at half-past ten, his room-mate was still 
digging away, and nothing more had been said about the 
Underhill square-up. 

The next day it was just the same. How Larry ex- 
plained things to his professors, made up the lost day's 
class-cuts, and contrived to get credit for the tests he had 
missed, were matters upon which Purdick was left un- 
informed. But Ollie McKnight, between whom and little 
Purdick there had grown up an intimacy which was as 
odd as it was comradely, brought in a bit of news that 
was calculated to key any friend of Larry's up to the 
fighting pitch. It was to the effect that Brock, the head 


156 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


157 


coach, had taken Larry off the foot-ball team ; had either 
suspended or fired him, McKnight didn’t know which. 

“That’s simply an outrage!” Purdick burst out, add- 
ing: “I suppose you know what it comes from?” 

“Sure,” said the son of Consolidated Steel; “Brock’s 
heard the story that’s going around about Larry’s being 
off on a bat. How much do you know about it, Purdy? 
Is any part of it true?” 

Purdick told what he knew, and McKnight gave a low 
whistle. 

“Larry can’t deny it, eh? — or, at least, can’t deny any> 
thing but the intention ? And his explanation, which you 
and I take at its face value, of course, won’t look very 
good to people who don’t know Larry ; in fact, I shouldn’t 
wonder if a good many of the fellows wouldn’t call it 
a rather clumsy lie. What does Dickie Maxwell say 
about it?” 

“Dick was up to the room last evening just before 
Larry came in. He hadn’t heard the story then. You 
couldn’t make him believe that Larry is telling anything 
but just the plain straight truth.” 

“Of course he’s telling the truth. Trouble is, it’s going 
to sound too improbable to be believed. What Larry 
ought to do is to go right after this Underhill bunch and 
show it up — prove that it was a frame-up.” 

“That’s what he said he was going to do, last night,” 
said Purdick. 

“All right,” McKnight nodded. “You tell him when 
he’s ready to start in he can count upon me and all the 
fellows in our house. We’re for him, even if it takes 
a round robin to the faculty.” 


158 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Purdick nursed that little offer of help and held him- 
self in readiness to spring it when Larry should again 
broach the subject of a just vengeance upon the Underhill 
plotters. But when another evening had all but passed, 
and Larry hadn’t once mentioned the “ frame-up,” its 
perpetrators, or the humiliating blow that Coach Brock 
had dealt him, Purdick could no longer contain himself. 

“Ollie McKnight says you’re put off the team,” he said, 
stooping to untie his shoes. “Is that so?” 

Larry nodded. 

“Did you tell Brock what you told me?” 

Larry nodded again, adding : 

“He didn’t believe what I told him, of course; nobody 
would.” 

“Well?” Purdick broke out raspily. “Are you going 
to take it lying down from this bunch of money-rotten 
highbinders? You said last night that you were going 
after them for blood.” 

Larry sat back in his chair at the study table, and the 
good gray eyes were a bit gloomy. 

“I know I did, Purdy, and I meant it — then.” 

“But you don’t mean it now ?” 

“No.” 

“Why?” 

Larry was silent for a moment. 

“I don’t know as I could make you understand, though 
I guess maybe Dick Maxwell would. I’ve got a horrible 
temper, Purdy.” 

“Yes you have !” — with what was meant to be scathing 
irony. “You’re just too easy for any common kind of 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


159 


use — chicken-hearted where other people are concerned, 
Vd call it!” 

“Don’t you make any such mistake as that,” Larry 
said quickly, with the gloom in his eyes changing swiftly 
to the fighting glow that came into them when he was 
struggling for that extra yard on the foot-ball field. “I 
could smash every man in that gang and never turn a 
hair!” 

“Then why don’t you do it ?” 

“Well, partly because I don’t dare to.” 

“Afraid ?” — incredulously. 

“Yes; afraid of myself.” 

“Ump!” said little Purdick; “I wear a six-and-three- 
quarters hat. I guess you’ll have to make it plainer than 
that for a head the size of mine.” 

“I’m just afraid to let go, that’s all. You’ve read in 
war stories how men, soldiers, who have been decent, 
sober fellows all their lives get to be brutes and devils 
when they let the brute-and-devil part of ’em come to the 
top. I’ve been holding my brute-and-devil down ever 
since I was a little kid, and I don’t dare to let it get up 
now. That’s all there is to it, Purdy.” 

“So you’ll let this lying story go on spilling itself all 
over the place, and lose your chance for the ’Varsity, and 
maybe get a call-down from the faculty, all because 
you’re afraid you might let go all holds if you went after 
the fellows who are trying to do you up?” 

“It’s as true as if you were reading it out of a book,” 
said Larry, and with that he turned back to his drawing- 
board, and Purdick went to bed. 

To a man up a tree, that might have seemed to be the 


160 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


end of it, so far as Larry’s reinstatement on the team 
or his vindication on the campus was concerned. But 
little Pur dick was of the tribe of those who stick and 
hang. He was pleased to believe that he owed Larry the 
biggest debt that one fellow could possibly owe another, 
and he didn’t propose to see his benefactor’s record 
smashed by any such vengeful plot as — he made no doubt 
— the Underhill conspirators had concocted and carried 
out. If Larry wouldn’t fight for himself, then he, Charles 
Purdick, would fight for him — and to the last ditch. 

But just how to go about it, with Larry unwilling to 
say or do anything in his own defense, was a problem. 
Purdick waited for a day or two, hoping that Dick Max- 
well would turn up; and on the third day after Larry 
had been dropped from the team, Dick did turn up. 

“Where’s Larry?” he ripped out, bursting into the big 
room just as Purdick was settling down for the evening 
grind on his Math. 

“He’s gone out somewhere,” said Purdick. 

Dick flung himself into a chair. 

“That miserable, low-down lie that’s going ’round 
about him !” he boiled over. “Did you know he’d been 
dropped from the team?” 

Purdick nodded. “That was three days ago. I’ve been 
hoping you’d come over.” 

“Conspiracy of silence !” Dick fumed. “No one of the 
fellows in the house wanted to be the first to tell me, 
and I haven’t been on the field since last Saturday. 
What’s Larry doing about it?” 

“Nothing.” 

“But, Great Moses, something’s got to be done!” 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


161 


Purdick shook his head. 

“Larry won’t do anything, and it’s just about breaking 
his heart. I’ve tried to buck him up and get him to make 
a fight and show the Underhill bunch up for what it is, 
but he won’t do it ; says he’s got such a bad temper that 
there won’t be any end to it if he lets himself go.” 

“Yes; he and his temper!” Dick snorted. Then: “It 
was a put-up job, of course?” 

“Not the slightest doubt of it, in my mind. You know 
what they told him over there at ‘Pat’s Place’ — that you’d 
gone off the hooks and were needing somebody to take 
you home. Larry fell for it, and then they managed to 
get him into one of the little card-rooms that had proba- 
bly been ‘fixed’ for him — alcohol spilled around on the 
floor. That got him half sick to begin with, and then, 
when he asked for a drink of water, they doped him.” 

“Huh!” said Dick. “So that’s the straight of it, is it? 
Naturally, I hadn’t heard that part of it. It was after 
that that Markley and Dugger found him, I suppose ?” 

“Yes. That part of it is probably true. They found 
him asleep and helped carry him out to the old cow barn. 
But it sticks in my craw that they didn’t need to have 
anybody tell them where to find him.” 

“Of course they didn’t. That was part of the plot. 
And you say Larry won’t try to do anything to clear 
himself?” 

“No.” 

“Then it’s up to us,” said Dick promptly. “You owe 
him something, Purdy, and so do I. We’ll get together 
on this thing and show that money-rotten bunch up for 
what it really is.” 


162 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Purdick’s eyes narrowed. 

“Your father is a rich man, too, isn’t he?” he thrust 
in quietly. 

“What of that?” 

“N-nothing; only I thought maybe you might want to 
stay on your own side of the fence.” 

“Now, see here, Purdy; let’s fight this thing out once 
for all. You’ve got the same idea that Larry brought 
here with him at first — about the classes and the masses, 
and all that. I don’t know where you’ve been living all 
your life, but it certainly couldn’t have been in the Amer- 
ica that I know the most about. You come out West with 
us next summer and we’ll show you the real America; 
a place where people — or most of ’em, anyway — will take 
you for what you are, and not for what you’ve got in 
the bank. It’s only in the crowded places that you soak up 
that ‘class’ stuff.” 

Purdick looked away. 

“I’d like to believe you, Maxwell ; honestly, I would,” 
he said. “And you’re right about one thing. I’ve lived 
in cities — factory cities — all my life. But to get back to 
Larry: this thing is fairly killing him by inches. He 
doesn’t say anything to me, but I know. When he’s here 
in the room he just grinds and grinds; crawls back into 
his shell and pulls the hole in after him. And the minute 
he’s got his work up, he pulls his cap over his face and 
digs out. Sometimes he doesn’t came back until one or 
two o’clock in the morning.” 

“I know,” said Dick; “takes to the woods. That’s 
what he used to do in the old days when anything went 
crossways with him. I know what he’s doing; he’s fight- 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


163 


mg that temper he told you about. He isn’t afraid of 
anybody but himself. I brayed about that temper thing 
when you spoke of it a minute ago, but he’s got it, all 
right. If he ever turned loose on Undy, he’d kill him. I 
know, because I’ve seen him fighting mad one or two 
times when he was just a kid in knee breeches.” 

Purdick shoved his books aside. 

“There’s no time like the present, Maxie. If we’re 
going to try to straighten this mess up for Larry, let’s 
go to it.” 

“I’m with you,” said Dick, getting upon his feet 
quickly. “Only I haven’t any more idea than the man in 
the moon where to begin.” 

“Perhaps I can help out a little on that end of it,” said 
Purdick, with a sort of crooked smile, adding : “I’m about 
ten years older than you are, Maxie, in some things.” 
And then he got his coat and cap and they went out 
together. 

Most naturally, when they were in the street, Dick 
thought Purdick would head for one of the houses across 
the campus where the various members of the faculty 
lived. The only possible thing to do, as he saw it, was to 
get some one of the professors interested and so start 
a faculty investigation. But Purdick seemed to have a 
plan of his own, for when they reached the cross-street 
corner, he turned short and led the way toward the bridge 
and the town. 

There was no pause made until they reached “Pat’s 
Place,” and none there, save that Purdick glanced up at 
the windows in the second story as if to see whether they 
were lighted or dark. Following the upward glance, Dick 


164 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


saw that there was a light in an upper room, and the next 
thing he knew he was climbing a narrow stair at Pur- 
dick’s heels. At a door near the stair-head, Purdick 
rapped, and a mumbling voice said thickly: “Come in, 
then!” 

What Dick saw when the door opened under Purdick’ s 
hand was a rather gaudily furnished room with a thick- 
piled carpet on the floor which looked as if it were rarely 
swept. There was a desk in the middle of the room, and 
in the pivot-chair belonging to it sat a man with a round, 
fat face, little pig-like black eyes, black mustaches curled 
at the ends, and shiny black hair plastered in a barber’s 
curl on his forehead. To keep up the color scheme the 
man had a black cigar clamped between his teeth, and on 
his feet, which were cocked up on the desk, were shoes 
which looked as if they had just escaped from the polish- 
ing attack of a bootblack. 

Dick didn’t know the man from Adam, but he read 
the papers often enough to be able to guess at once that 
the upper room was the private — and unofficial — office of 
the most notorious of the little city’s board of aldermen, 
Mr. Patrick Clanahan. 

“Little college lads, eh?” grunted the man in the chair, 
as they filed in and stood before him. “What’d ye be 
wantin’ o’ me at this time o’ night?” 

Dick couldn’t have told to save his life, but little Pur- 
dick seemed to labor under no handicap whatever. 

“It’s about your saloon down-stairs, Mr. Clanahan,” he 
said, looking the fat-faced man squarely in the eyes. 
“Last Monday night one of our fellows was taken in 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


165 


there and drugged. We want to know who hired your 
people to do it.” 

“Lord love us!” chuckled the black-haired boss. 
“Would ye listen to the nerve av the little cockerel? ‘We 
want to know who hired your people to do it/ says he !” 

“That’s it,” said Purdick coolly. “We know they were 
hired, and we want to know who paid them for it.” 

The fat alderman took his feet down from the desk 
and the little pig-like eyes snapped viciously. 

“Ye little fool !” he bit out, “d’ye think f ’r wan minute 
ye can run a bluff the like o’ that on Pat Clanahan ? Get 
out o’ here, the both av yez, before I’d be t’rowin’ yez 
out!” 

But little Purdick stood his ground. 

“You’ll find that it isn’t a bluff. We don’t care any- 
thing about your people down-stairs, though it might make 
trouble if it was known that your place is one where a 
fellow could have knockout drops given to him in a glass 
of water. What we want to know — what we’re going to 
find out — is who bribed them to do it, Mr. Clanahan.” 

It was just here that the real explosion came. Bound- 
ing to his feet and making a move as if he would come 
around the desk to throw them out, the fat-faced ward 
boss blew up. 

“There’s the dure!” he shouted, pointing to it with a 
pudgy finger. “Shut it whin ye go out! ’Tis babes in 
ar-rms yez are to be cornin’ here and talkin’ knockout 
drops to Patsy Clanahan ! I’d have yez to know ” 

Little Purdick led the way out as he had led it in, care- 
fully closing the door upon the remainder of the explo- 
sion. On the sidewalk Dick drew a long breath. 


166 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“You sure had your nerve along with you, Purdy, just 
as he said,” he gasped. “Did you think you could do 
anything with a man like that?” 

“I gave him his chance,” was the cool-voiced rejoinder. 
“You remember the story in the old spelling-book, about 
the farmer who caught the apple thieves up in his trees 
and threw clods at them first before he began to throw 
stones. I was just throwing a little clod or two; but now 
we’ll go and see if we can’t rustle up a few stones.” 

The next place Purdick headed for was the Micrometer 
office, on the top floor of the Chronicle Building. Luck- 
ily, they found Havercamp there, and he was alone in the 
little editorial den of the college daily. 

“Hello, you near-Soffies !” he grinned as they entered. 
“What are you doing out at this time o’ night?” 

“Time o’ night’s time o’ the early evening,” said Pur- 
dick. Then: “It’s about Larry Donovan. Of course, 
you’ve heard the story?” 

Havercamp’s grin faded. 

“I never was so knocked out in my life. He was here 
with me up to eleven o’clock that night, and I remember 
when he left he said he had to go home and work on 
some test stuff that was still waiting.” 

“And you haven’t seen him since?” 

“Not a sign of him. He’s chucked the reporting job, 
along with everything else. Hacked about being dropped 
from the team, I suppose.” 

“Listen, Havercamp,” said Purdick; and he briefed 
the real facts in the scandal case for the managing editor 
in true newsman fashion. 

“Oho!” said Havercamp; “so that’s it, is it? — tolled 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


167 


in with a smooth lie and then drugged. What have you 
done about it?” 

Again, and in the same crisp speech, Purdick told of 
their late call upon Mr. Patrick Clanahan. 

“Of course, you knew that wouldn’t get you anywhere,” 
said Havercamp. “You have to pull a gun on Pat when 
you want to hold him up. Wait a minute.” 

He was gone possibly ten minutes instead of one, but 
when he came back his eyes were snapping. 

“Just been having a little heart-to-heart talk with Mr. 
Bolinger, of the Chronicle ” he explained. “The Chronicle 
will back us if we want to make it a fight to a finish. 
Let’s go.” 

Again Dick followed blindly, though this time it was 
Havercamp who was leading the way. Still, he wasn’t 
very greatly surprised to find that the way led back to the 
garishly furnished room over “Pat’s Place.” At the stair- 
head landing Havercamp didn’t knock; he opened the 
door and walked in. As when Dick and Purdick had pre- 
sented themselves, the ward boss had his feet on the 
desk, and he was just lighting another of the midnight- 
black cigars. 

Havercamp was even more brittle than Purdick had 
been. 

“You know who I am, Mr. Clanahan,” he began, “and 
what we’ve come for. I’m only going to add one thing 
to what my friend Purdick here has already said to you. 
I have Mr. Bolinger’s authority for saying that the Chron- 
icle will print all the facts in Donovan’s case if you don’t 
come across and help us get the man or men higher up.” 

Dickie Maxwell, having had less than no experience in 


168 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


such matters, expected another explosion. But it did not 
come. Instead, the ward boss merely chuckled good- 
naturedly and tendered Havercamp one of the black cigars 
— which Havercamp didn’t take. 

“I’rA expectin’ ’twas on’y a rough bit av a joke on the 
young felly, Misther Havercamp,” he said. “You little 
college fc’ys are always puttin’ thim up on wan another.” 

“Call it whatever you like,” cut in Havercamp 
brusquely, “We want the man who did the job, with an 
order-do him to tell us who put him up to it. We’ll do 
the rest.” 

The boss pressed the ball of a fat thumb on a bell-push, 
and in a minute or two the stubble-bearded fellow who 
had led Larry to his undoing came in. 

“ ’Tis the little joke ye played on wan o’ the college 
lads last Monday night, Jerky,” Clanahan explained to 
his henchman. “ ’Tis a peck av throuble ye stirred up — 
widout m’anin’ to. Ye’ll be going wid Misther Haver- 
camp and these lads and doin’ what they want ye to do 
to take th’ kinks out av it.” 

The man nodded as if the order were all in the day’s 
work, and with Havercamp for their leader the four 
tramped out and down the narrow stair. In the street 
Havercamp quickly called an auto hack, and in grim 
silence a swift run was made to the college suburb. It 
ended in front of the house assigned to Dr. Shotliffe, 
Dean of the Mechanical School, and the four passengers 
got out and ascended the steps. As he rang the door-bell, 
Havercamp gave the Clanahan henchman a final word. 

“You’ve got your orders; all we ask of you is that you 


FRIENDS IN NEED 


169 


tell the straight truth, no matter whom it hits. If you do 
that, there won’t be any afterclap — for you.” 

What took place in the Dean’s study after the four had 
been admitted does not form any part of the Old Sheddon 
records. But two days later a faculty meeting was called 
and four members of the Freshman class, Bryant Under- 
hill, Alexander Crawford, John Dugger and Albert 
Markley were summarily dropped from the Registrar’s 
list of undergraduates, and Old Sheddon knew them no 
more. 

And on the same day Larry Donovan — a Larry once 
more light-hearted and able to look the world and all the 
people in it squarely in the eye — took his old place at 
right half on the ’Varsity practice field. 


XIII 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 

<< "1T7"HAT are you fellows going to do in the summer 

* * vacation ?” 

It was Ollie McKnight who wanted to know, and he 
had just come in from the gymnasium showers where he 
had been cooling off after a lively practice with the 
Freshman team; scrimmages which, in the warm after- 
noon, were a little like sessions in a Turkish bath. 

There were various answers from the half-dozen 
Freshmen lounging in the big room at Mother Grant’s 
which had been occupied for nearly half of the college 
year by Larry and Purdick. Welborn, the big Aggie, 
said he was going home to Missouri to work on the farm. 
Wally Dixon said his father was building an addition to 
his packing plant in Kansas City, and that he’d probably 
have a job wheelbarrowing concrete, or something of that 
sort. Cal Rogers made a similar response. His father 
was a contractor, and he, Cal, supposed there was a 
wheelbarrow or a shovel or a pick waiting for him at his 
home town in Iowa. 

“How about you two Timanyoni Twins?” McKnight 
asked, tossing the question to Dick Maxwell and Larry. 

“Work for me, too, if I can find anything to do,” 
Larry said ; and Dick wrinkled his nose at McKnight. 

“You’ll have to stay and see Commencement through 
for the rest of us, Knighty,” he said. “We’re all too in- 
170 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


171 


dustrious to hang around here for doings where Fresh- 
men have to stick on the side lines and don’t get a look- 
in.” 

“That’s the way of it,” little Purdick put in. “Com- 
mencement’s no Freshman game. Do you stay, Knighty?” 

“Not on your life. I’ve got a job, too, strange as it 
may seem. It’s northern Minnesota and the iron country 
for mine. While you fellows are doing your little sum- 
mer chores all over the lot you can get a long-distance 
snap-shot of me down in some open cut in the Mesaba, 
chucking coal into the tummy of a steam shovel, or some- 
thing of that sort.” 

“Yes, I think I see you with overalls on !” said Rogers 
sarcastically. “You’ll be doing a cross-country run in a 
million-dollar buzz-wagon, or sailing a brass-mounted 
yacht up the Maine coast, or something like that. I know 
you, Knighty.” 

“Maybe you did know me last summer, or the summer 
before,” McKnight got back. “But that isn’t saying that 
you know me now. I’ve already asked Dad if I can’t go 
to the Mesaba and begin to learn the steel business from 
the bottom, and he didn’t write to say ‘yes.’ Not on your 
moving-picture. He wired it.” 

Wally Dixon shook his head in mock solemnity. 

“You shouldn’t ought to do things like that, Ollie ; 
not unless you’re sure there’s no heart disease in your 
family. Think of the terrible shock it must have been 
when they got your letter.” 

“That’s all right,” laughed the son of the steel magnate 
good-naturedly. “I’ll admit I was one of the Willie- 
boys when I came here last fall, but it’s only fair to Old 


172 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Sheddon to say that I hope she's done a little something 
for me in nine months." 

After a bit more of this good-natured joshing the fel- 
lows began to drop out, one by one, drifting away to their 
respective rooming places. The year-end examinations 
were on, the outdoor activities were stringing out to a 
close, and even the bright stars who had made “A’s” and 
“B’s" in the semester tests were cramming a bit for the 
final trials. 

“ You're going to make the turn all right, this time, 
aren't you, Purdy?" asked Larry, after the others had 
gone, referring, for the first time since Purdick had come 
to room with him, to the small one's discouraging flunk- 
out of the previous year. 

“Easy," said Purdick ; “thanks to you and to that other 
fellow whose name you won’t tell me. Can’t you take 
the bridle off of that promise now, Larry?" 

“Permission not yet given,” Larry grinned. 

“Will it ever be given ?" 

“Maybe — some day." 

Silence for a little while, and then Purdick began again. 
“I've been leaning hard upon what you said to me — that 
freezing cold night in my old room over Heffelfinger's : 
that you’d have taken the money yourself if you'd been 
in my place. Can you say it again, Larry ?" 

“Easier now than I could then. The fellow who built 
your scholarship is a man, all the way up and down, Pur- 
dy. I’d bank on him for anything." 

“It wasn’t Dick Maxwell ?” 

Larry laughed. “No, it wasn't Dickie. But you 
mustn’t begin to worm things out of me by the process 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


173 


of elimination. Let’s be fair to your ‘good angel.’ All 
he asks is to stay unknown. Besides, I shouldn’t wonder 
if he’d forgotten all about the scholarship by this time. 
It’d be just like him.” 

Purdick looked up quickly. 

“Do you mean by that he’s got so much money that 
two thousand dollars, more or less, don’t mean anything 
to him?” he asked. 

Larry had a swift jab from that inner sense which is 
sometimes called after- wit, realizing that he had said too 
much. 

“You shut up, Purdy; I’m not going to say another 
word about it. You’ve got the boost, and the other fel- 
low’s got what does him a lot more good than the money 
is doing you. That’s all there is to it, and you couldn’t 
get any more out of me if you were to give me the third 
degree.” 

That settled it for the time being, and during the few 
remaining days which led up to Commencement Week 
everybody was too busy to think or talk about anything 
but the year-end job in hand. 

It was after the examinations were over, and there was 
not much left for a Freshman to do but to burn his green 
cap and go home, that Larry and little Purdick took a 
farewell evening hike out to the bridge which bore their 
class numerals. It had been a perfect June day, and the 
evening matched it harmoniously. A light shower the 
night before had laid the dust, spring green was waving 
from the trees and nodding to them from the fields, and 
the song of the cardinal was abroad in the land. 

“You didn’t turn out for the bridge scrap, did you, 


174 ' 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Purdy?” said Larry, as they hoisted themselves to seats 
on the approach parapet where he and Dick Maxwell had 
sat through a pretty painful session one evening some 
few weeks earlier. 

“You know I didn’t. About that time o’ night I was 
washing dishes in Hassler’s kitchen.” 

“But you’ll be in the next one. We’ll be the defenders 
next fall, and we want to keep those old figures up there 
for another year.” 

“Lot of good I’d be !” scoffed the small one. “If we 
should happen to get a few grasshoppers in the next 
Freshman class, perhaps I might be able to pull a leg off 
of one or two of ’em. But that’s about all.” 

“Size isn’t everything,” Larry offered. Having plenty 
of it himself, he could easily disregard the lack of it in 
others. Then: “Have you always been off weight, 
Purdy?” 

“Ever since I can remember. My mother was small.” 

In all their close association as room-mates Purdick had 
rarely talked of himself or his past, and never of his peo- 
ple. But now, perhaps because the parting for the sum- 
mer was so near at hand, he let out a little. 

“We were poor folks,” he went on ; “poor in the way 
you don’t know anything about, because your father had 
a trade and a good one. Mine was a day laborer, and 
there were seven mouths to fill.” 

“Five children?” said Larry. “That’s our number at 
home.” 

“That was our number, but it isn’t any more; there 
are only two of us now — my sister Alice and I.” 

“And your father and mother?” 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


175 


“Both dead. Mother was never very strong, and the 
fight was too hard for her. After the other children died, 
she sort of lost her — her courage, I guess. That left only 
father and two children ; and Alice wasn't big enough to 
do much. That’s how I learned to cook and wash dishes.” 

“Then your father died?” 

“He was killed — in the steel works. It was an open- 
hearth furnace, and he was on the puddler’s gang. There 
was a loose board in the run-way, and the hand-rail was 
broken. The men had complained, time and again, but 
nothing was done. One day father slipped.” He stopped 
abruptly, and when he spoke again it was to say, “Do 
you wonder that things have made sort of an anarchist 
of me, Larry?” 

“Huh !” said Larry, “you’re not much of an anarchist.” 

“Not the long-haired kind, maybe. But I’ve got to 
stay on my own side of the fence. There’s a horrible lot 
of injustice in this old world, Larry.” 

“Sure there is,” Larry agreed. Then, to keep Purdick 
from running off on one of his bitter streaks: “Where 
is your sister now, Purdy?” 

“She’s in Elsmere. You know they have a sort of an 
apprentice course there; a girl can work in the kitchen 
and have certain hours in the Domestic Economy classes. 
And that’s another thing: Allie’s been having just about 
as hard a time as I had before you took me in. You never 
said there were any strings tied to that scholarship money. 
There weren’t any, were there ?” 

“Not a single string.” 

“Well, of course, I split it with Allie right away. That 


176 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


was one of the things that made me take it without mak- 
ing you tell me more about it.” 

“Um,” said Larry. “Then you’ll have to go to work 
this summer to earn some more.” 

“That’s all right; I expected to do that, anyway.” 

“What kind of a job?” 

Purdick shrugged his shoulders. “Beggars mustn’t 
be choosers ; and little beggars have to take what’s handed 
out to them. I haven’t the muscle to tackle any real man- 
sized job. I suppose it will be office drudgery of some 
kind — if I’m lucky enough to land anything.” 

Larry had a swift and rather discomforting picture of 
the small one hived in some city office building and run- 
ning an adding machine, or something of that sort, 
through the hot months. 

“You ought to have a real vacation, Purdy; some job 
that would keep you outdoors every minute in the day,” 
he said. 

“Fat chance!” Purdick returned, with a hard little 
laugh. “None of the outdoor jobs wants a sawed-off 
like me.” Then, after a pause : “Don’t you sweat about 
me, Larry. You’ve done enough for me, as it is. Let’s 
go to supper.” And he slid down from his place on the 
wall. 

They had tramped along in comradely silence for possi- 
bly half of the long mile lying between the county bridge 
and the university grounds when they crossed a ram- 
shackly little wooden span over a creek emptying into the 
river a few hundred yards to their left. The flimsy struc- 
ture shook under them as they walked across it, and Pur- 
dick made gibing comment. 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


177 


“Isn’t that just like the loose ends that are let go in 
all public works!” he criticised. “Here is a fine, hard- 
surfaced highway, the main county outlet to the north, 
with a concrete bridge over the river that probably cost 
the taxpayers thousands of dollars, and right here they’ve 
left that old wooden trap that a man wouldn’t dare drive 
a ‘Henry’ over faster than a cow could walk!” 

Larry turned and looked the “trap” over with a me- 
chanical eye. It was all that Purdick had said it was. 
“I’d hate to put a loaded truck on it,” he remarked; and 
then they walked on. 

They had gone perhaps a couple of hundred yards be- 
yond the creek and its ramshackle bridge when they heard 
the distant honk of an automobile horn. The machine 
was coming along the pike behind them, and they could 
see that it was being driven at a good clip. Moreover, it 
was approaching the wooden span without showing any 
signs of slackening the speed. 

“Gee!” Larry exclaimed, “if he hits that scrap heap 
going like that — ” 

He got no farther, for at that precise instant the on- 
coming machine did hit the scrap heap. As the two 
trampers sprang aside to give a clear road, there was a 
ripping crash, a shrill scream from somebody in the auto, 
and car and wooden bridge disappeared in a cloud of dust. 

“Great Moses !” gasped little Purdick, “I’ll bet the last 
one of them’s killed!” 

“Come on!” Larry shouted, and they broke all track 
records in a flying sprint to the scene of the disaster. 

It was a pretty bad smash. The car was a heavy tour- 
ing machine. It had turned part way over on its, side in 


178 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


the fall and was tangled hopelessly in the bridge timbers 
and planking. 

Its occupants — there were three of them, a woman, a 
girl and a man — were caught under the crushed top, and 
when Larry and Purdick ran up, the girl was crying and 
trying to lift the woman, who seemed to be either dead or 
in a dead faint. The man, bronzed, middle-aged, and 
looking as if he might be a retired cattle king, was pinned 
between the bent steering-wheel and the back of the driv- 
ing seat, but he did not seem to be badly injured. 

“If you two can take a plank and pry me loose, 1 ” he 
said quite calmly, as Larry and Purdick jumped down 
into the chaos and fell frantically at work. In a jiffy the 
thing was done, and then the three of them tore the 
broken top away and got the woman and the girl out. 
With every chance for a fatal accident, or at least a sad 
array of broken bones, it proved that no one of the three 
was seriously hurt. The woman, a stoutly built lady with 
the prettiest silvering hair Larry had ever seen — so he 
was saying to himself — came to as they lifted her to the 
level of the roadway, and a torn dress seemed to be the 
worst of her injuries. The girl had a cut in one round 
arm made by a piece of flying glass when the wind-shield 
broke, but she tied her handkerchief around it and after 
that was done, paid no more attention to it than a boy 
would. 

When they all reached a point at which they could 
draw a long breath and begin to straighten things out, 
Larry looked hard at the sunburned gentleman and said : 
“Aren’t you Dick Maxwell’s Uncle Billy Starbuck, from 
Brewster, Colorado?” 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


179 


“You’ve guessed it the first time,” said the cattle- 
kingish gentleman with a grim little smile. “And you’re 
young Donovan, aren’t you? — the fellow who was with 
Dick last summer up in the Tourmaline?” 

“Yes ; I’m Larry, and this is Charles Purdick, my room- 
mate,” said Larry, introducing his fellow rescuer. “We’d 
been out for a little hike and were going back when we 
saw you coming.” 

“How far are we from town?” asked “Uncle Billy.” 

“Only about half a mile; it’s just over the top of that 
hill,” Larry answered. “If you’ll stay here with the 
ladies, we’ll run back and find an auto for you. You 
were going to stop at Sheddon anyway, weren’t you?” 

“Again you’ve guessed it,” said the bronzed man, who 
seemed to be taking the smash-up as calmly as if high- 
priced cars grew on bushes for anybody to pick. “We 
were driving through from Chicago to New York, and 
we came around this way to spend a few hours with Dick 
before he starts for home.” 

Purdick had stood aside while this bit of talk was going 
on, and he was wondering who the pretty — though some- 
what pudgy — little girl was. She had apparently for- 
gotten her cut arm and was standing on the creek bank 
looking down at the smashed auto. Purdick moved a 
little nearer because he was afraid the bank would cave 
in and let her down. 

“That bank is pretty soft,” he cautioned. “I wouldn’t 
go too near the edge if I were you.” 

She turned and looked him over appraisingly. 

“What a funny little green cap,” she commented. 


180 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


“That’s Freshman, isn’t it? Are you a Sheddon Fresh- 
man?” 

Purdick nodded. “For a few days longer — until the 
grade markings are handed out.” 

“I’ve got a brother in the Freshman class. I wonder 
if you know him. I’m Ruth McKnight.” 

“Know Ollie McKnight ? I should say I do ! He’s one 
of the best friends I’ve had this year.” 

“That’s nice,” said the girl. “I guess you’re the ‘Purdy’ 
he’s been writing about in his letters. You’re the Red- 
Wagon boy.” 

Purdick hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant, but 
he was handsomely forgetting the McKnight millions 
when he said : “I’m anything Ollie wants to call me.” 

That was all there was time for at the moment. Larry 
had been down in the wreck getting one of the seat 
cushions for the lady to sit on while she waited, and as he 
was climbing out, another auto came along headed town- 
ward. The farmer driving it stopped on the farther edge 
of things and called across to the “survivors” of the 
wreck. 

“Hello, neighbors! Trouble to burn, h’ain’t ye? Any- 
body hurt?” 

“Nothing serious,” said Dick’s uncle-by-marriage. 
“Luck was with us.” 

“But ye can’t git nowhere without your wagon. Wait 
till I drive round by t’other bridge and I'll give ye a lift to 
town,” and he turned his car and started back to make 
the detour. 

While they waited, Larry and Purdick pulled broken 
timbers out if the wrecked bridge and built warning road 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


181 


barriers on each side of the creek. In a short time the 
kindly farmer drove up and the shipwrecked ones were 
given places in his car. He told Larry and Dick they 
were welcome to standing-room on the running boards, 
but they thanked him and said they’d walk — that they 
were walking, anyway. 

“Did you hear what that girl was telling me ?” Purdick 
asked, after Dick’s uncle had told them both to be sure 
and look him up at the hotel in town, and the auto had 
sped away up the hill. 

Larry shook his head. “No; I was talking to Mr. 
Starbuck.” 

“She’s Ollie McKnight’s sister. She didn’t say how 
she came to be with Mr. and Mrs. Starbuck, but I suppose 
the Starbucks and McKnights are friends. Is Mr. Star- 
buck a rich man? But of course he is, or he wouldn’t 
ride off and leave a six-thousand-dollar car lying in the 
ditch without giving it a second look.” 

Larry laughed. 

“He can afford to, I guess. He and Dick’s father own 
a gold mine together, and he is a director in one of the 
Brewster banks.” 

“Huh !” said Purdick, and the tone in which he said it 
meant that Uncle Billy Starbuck wasn’t, or didn’t appear 
to be, at all the kind of rich man that he had been taught 
irom his infancy to hate and despise. 

“Mr. Starbuck is everybody’s ‘Uncle Billy’ in Brew- 
ster,” Larry went on. “He used to be a cowboy, they 
say, and after that he was a prospector and had all sorts 
of hard times.” 

“Huh!” said little Purdick again, and this time he 


182 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


added : “He doesn’t look or act like a man that any amount 
of money would spoil.” Beyond this he was silent until 
after they had topped the hill and the university buildings 
were in sight. Then he said : “What d’you suppose Ollie’s 
sister meant by calling me ‘the Red- Wagon boy’ ?” 

Larry choked for a minute. Here was all sorts of a 
chance that, right at the very last moment, the fat of the 
Red-Wagon scholarship was going to be spilled in the 
fire. 

“Did — did she call you that?” he stammered, clawing 
desperately to gain time. 

“Yes. She said Ollie had been calling me that in his 
letters home.” 

“Just some of Knighty’s foolishment, I guess,” said 
Larry. “He’s taken that way sometimes.” 

The reply seemed to satisfy Pur dick. Anyway, he 
didn’t ask any more ticklish questions, then, or later 
when they were together in their room after supper, 
hustling into their oldest clothes to take part in the Fresh- 
man cap-burning, which was scheduled for eight o’clock 
on the campus. 

Purdick had said at first that he wouldn’t go to the 
cap-burning; meaning thereby that he was still clinging 
to some of the old prejudices and was disposed to hold 
aloof from mingling with the class as a body. Though 
Larry had had prejudices enough of his own at the be- 
ginning of the year, it was he who had finally persuaded 
Purdick not to spoil the whole year by being “stuffy,” as 
he phrased it, at the very end of things. 

“Reckon the Soffies ’ll make any bad breaks?” Purdick 


THE GREEN CAP BONFIRE 


183 


asked, struggling into a shop jumper to take the place of 
his cast-off coat. 

“They’d better not,” said Larry grimly. “We wal- 
loped them last fall and we can do it again, if we have to. 
But the fellows tell me that the Soffie interference at the 
cap-burnings has been dying out. I guess they won’t 
monkey with us to-night.” 

Larry’s prediction proved to be a true one. When they 
reached the rendezvous on the campus, the big bonfire 
was already blazing, and the men of their class were 
gathering in full force for the final ceremony of their 
year as Freshmen. Though the cap-burning is strictly a 
Freshman rite, the other classes were out to look on, but 
there was no attempt made to interfere with the pro- 
gramme. 

College songs were sung, the Sheddon series given, 
and Wally Dixon, who, besides being a promising full- 
back, was pretty generally known as the class joker, made 
a speech in which he paid what you might call left-handed 
compliments to every fellow in the class whose name he 
could remember. After Dixon had worked off every 
joke, old or new, that he could think of, the men formed 
in line, single file, and marched solemnly around the big 
fire. At the third circling the green caps were flung into 
the blaze one by one as the procession passed a given 
point, and the final event of the Freshman year was over. 

It was at the moment of dispersal, after the last cap 
had gone up in smoke, that Dick halted Purdick and 
Larry. 

“Cal Rogers has lent me his car, and I want you two 
fellows to go over to the Brandon House with me to meet 


184 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Uncle Billy and Aunt Stella. They seem to think, some 
way, that you saved their lives, or something, in that auto 
accident they had.” 

It was quite like both of the two invited ones that they 
should try to squirm out, but Dick was insistent, though 
he did yield far enough to give them time to go over to 
their room and change their clothes. 

“All right; chase along and put on the glad rags,” he 
said. ‘Til be at the Man-o’-War with the car as soon 
as you’re ready.” And so they parted. 


XIV 


“westward ho!” 

ICK picked Larry and Purdick up at Mrs. Grant's 
a few minutes after the cap burning, and the three 
drove over to town. Leaving the borrowed Rogers car 
parked in front of the hotel, they found Mr. and Mrs. 
Starbuck and Ruth McKnight in the mezzanine lounge. 
Ollie McKnight, who had promised to bring a bunch of 
his frat brothers over after the cap burning, had not yet 
shown up, so Dick, Larry and Purdick had the field all to 
themselves for the time being. 

Much to Larry's comfort, as well as to little Purdick’s, 
the Starbucks passed over the auto accident and the “res- 
cue" lightly, and when the group of six began to fall apart 
into pairs, with Dick's aunt asking him a lot of things 
about his first year’s experience in college, and “Uncle 
Billy" cross-questioning Larry about how far he had 
gone in geology and the natural sciences in his High 
School course, Purdick found himself sort of abandoned 
to the tender mercies of the pudgy little girl who had 
named herself as one of the prospective heirs to the Mc- 
Knight millions. 

It was right out of a clear sky, so to speak, and with 
perfectly infantile frankness that she said: “I’m aw- 
fully glad you got hold of Ollie and made him give up 
something for once in his life. He used to be so tremend- 
ously piggish, you know. How did you do it?" 

' 185 


186 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


Purdick swallowed hard once or twice and looked as if 
he were going to choke. Finally he contrived to say: 
“You must be taking me for somebody else, I guess. I 
never made your brother give up anything.” 

“But didn’t Larry Donovan call you ‘Purdick’ out there 
by the wreck when he was talking to Uncle Billy ?” 

“That’s my name,” said Purdick, still more or less in 
the condition of a person who had stumbled over a wheel- 
barrow that he didn’t know was in the way. 

“Well, then; maybe you didn’t just make Ollie give up 
— of course you didn’t, if it comes to that. But he did 
give up, just the same, and that is what really counts. 
He says now that he’s going to give up his summer vaca- 
tion so as to have money enough to do it again.” 

Purdick’s stare had by this time become perfectly va- 
cant. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said; “I don’t know any more 
than a crazy person what you’re talking about.” 

“How funny !” she returned. “I mean the Red-Wagon 
scholarship, of course. It was the best thing that has 
ever happened to Ollie. He is such a terrible spendthrift 
— for just foolish things, you know. And when he wrote 
Daddy that he had taken the two thousand dollars that 
Daddy sent him to buy a new car with to make a scholar- 
ship for you — he called it the Red-Wagon scholarship 
because he was going to buy a red automobile — and was 
meaning to go to work this summer so that he could have 
his vacation money to make another scholarship for some- 
body else, we were all just simply petrified, and — 
Why, what’s the matter?” 

We may suppose that Purdick’s usually pale face was 


WESTWARD HOT 


187 


trying to turn all the colors of the rainbow. So Ollie 
McKnight was the one who had given him the two thou- 
sand dollars which was to help him through the Sheddon 
course! If Larry had only told him in the beginning! 

The rainbow flush was gone and his face was even 
paler than usual when he forced himself to say: “Did 
you ever live in Steelville, Pennsylvania ?” 

“Why, yes,” said the girl. “I was born there.” 

“So was I,” said little Purdick, and his eyes were nar- 
rowing curiously. Then came the next question: “Was 
your father the general manager of the steel works 
there?” 

“Not at first. But he was before we left to go and live 
in Chicago.” 

It was all out now. Ollie’s father — and this girl’s — 
was the man whom his father’s fellow laborers had said 
was responsible for the loose platform and the broken 
railing in the open-hearth furnace house, and so, indi- 
rectly, at least, responsible for the death which had left 
two orphans to fight their way as best they could with 
the bread-winner gone. And it was McKnight money he 
had been living on ! 

Purdick never knew afterward how he managed to keep 
on talking to the girl after this horrible revelation had 
battered its way into his brain. The thing he remembered 
most clearly was the tremendous feeling of relief he had 
when Ollie came up with half a dozen of the fellows from 
his fraternity house, and he — Purdick — was able to slip 
aside and, as you might say, efface himself. One thing, 
and only one, was clear in his mind ; he must never spend 
another penny of the money, and what he had already 


188 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


spent must be paid back. From the way he looked at it, 
it was blood-money — nothing more or less. 

Fifteen minutes later Larry found his room-mate at 
the stairhead, quietly making his escape. 

“Making a sneak, are you?” said Larry, clapping him 
on the shoulder. “Well, so am I, if anybody should ask 
you. Got to go home and pack in a hurry. It’s 'West- 
ward Ho!’ for us on the early morning train.” 

“You and Dick, you mean?” 

“M-m, yes; for Dick and me.” 

“I’ll help you pack,” Purdick offered, and not another 
word was said until Larry was turning on the lights in 
the room they had been sharing for something like half a 
year. Then it was that Purdick, dropping wearily into a 
chair, said his say. 

“I’m not blaming you any, Larry ; I guess you’ve been 
doing only what you had to do. But if you had told me 
at first that it was Ollie McKnight who was putting up 
the money for me, I’d have died before I would have 
taken it.” 

“Why, Purdy!” exclaimed Larry. And then: “Did 
Ruth McKnight tell you ?” 

Purdick nodded. 

“She didn’t know that I didn’t know. Neither did she 
know that my father was killed in the Steelville Furnace 
at the time when her father and Ollie’s was the general 
manager.” 

“Well?” said Larry, failing to see the connection. 

“Don’t you see?” said Purdick harshly. “Wasn’t he 
my father’s murderer? Wasn’t that loose plank and 


‘WESTWARD HO!” 


189 


broken railing reported time and again, and nothing was 
done about them?” 

Now there had been a time, and not so many months 
back, at that, when Larry Donovan, taking a leaf out of 
the book of his experience as an apprentice and helper in 
the railroad shop at home where he had heard some of 
the men constantly talking about the greed of the capital- 
ists and their disregard for the comfort and safety of 
their workmen, would have given at least a qualified as- 
sent to little Purdick’s bitter charge. But he was no 
longer the one-sided fellow he had been when his college 
mates had called him ‘‘The Offish Worm.” 

“Let’s see a minute,” he temporized. “Was it posi- 
tively known that Mr. McKnight had been told about the 
loose board?” 

“Put yourself in his place,” was Purdick’s retort. “If 
you were in charge of a mill or a furnace where men’s 
lives were at stake, wouldn’t you consider it a part of your 
job to see such reports and act upon them?” 

“I know,” Larry countered quickly, “but I’ve worked 
in a shop long enough to know that a lot of things that 
ought to go to the man higher up never get there. We 
had a foreman who was always jumping on the men for 
kicking about bad safety appliances. I don’t believe he 
ever reported half of ’em to anybody who had the author- 
ity to order them fixed.” 

It was just here that the real miracle began to show 
itself, like the face of the sun crawling out of the shadow 
of a total eclipse. Though he hardly realized it, and 
would, perhaps, have refused to admit it, the college year, 
so different from the year in which he had worked and 


190 


DICK AND LARRY: FRESHMEN 


failed, had planted a lot of new things in Charles Purdick. 
The timely help that had come at a moment when he was 
so sick and discouraged that it seemed as if he must give 
up the fight for an education; the way in which’ Larry 
had stood by him; the frank and helpful friendship of 
such “rotten rich” fellows as Dick Maxwell, Wally Dixon, 
Cal Rogers and Ollie McKnight; recollections of all these 
“mollifications,” if you could call them so, came crowding 
in when the old class-and-mass hatred tried to get in its 
word. And in the end it was the “mollifications” that 
won out — at least, in the matter of Ollie McKnight’s gen- 
erous gift. 

“I — I guess I can’t go back on Ollie, after all,” he 
admitted, finally. “I was savage at first — when his sister 
told me. I kept telling myself that I’d work my fingers 
to the bone to pay that money back, and that I’d starve 
before I’d use another penny of it. I — I guess that was 
just plain, low-down meanness in me, Larry.” 

“Now you’re talking like a sure-enough man!” said 
Larry, chuckling as delightedly over the victory as he 
would if he had stood in Ollie McKnight’s shoes. “Let’s 
call it a locked door, and if I were you, I’d never let Ollie 
know that his little scheme for keeping the thing dark has 
gone blooey. Seems to me that’s the whitest thing to do.” 

“You’re right; you’re mighty nearly always right, 
Larry,” said Purdick, jumping up to help Larry get his 
trunk out of the closet. “Now if I were only sure of get- 
ting a job this summer — ” 

“What did you have in mind?” queried Larry, as craft- 
ily as if he were trying to trap somebody into betraying a 
secret. 


“WESTWARD HO!” 


191 


“It's the big city and a hot office for mine,” said Pur- 
dick, as Larry began to throw his clothes pell mell into 
the open trunk. 

“Bet you a dollar you never see the inside of an office 
this whole summer,” was the joshing reply. 

“I wish I didn’t have to. But that’s where I’ll land. 
I’m not husky enough for anything else, unless it’s sling- 
ing dishes in a restaurant, or something like that.” 

“Well,” Larry went on in the same sort of triumphant 
joshing tone, “I’ll bet you another dollar that you do 
sling dishes this summer, a part of the time — only they’ll 
be tin ones. Take me up ?” 

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” said little Pur- 
dick ; and he didn’t. 

“Of course you don’t, and I shan’t keep you on tenter- 
hooks another minute. You’re going to Colorado with 
Dick and me.” 

“Who — who said I was?” 

“Mr. William Starbuck said so — and he meant it. Dick 
and I are going to put in the whole summer prospecting 
in the Hophra Mountains for tungsten, bauxite, and the 
chrome-bearing ores. Uncle Billy is financing the job, 
and he came down here to-day especially to ask Dick if he 
didn’t want to pick out a couple of his classmates for 
bunkies and go to it. It will be simply one long picnic; 
big woods, big mountains, big game if we want it, and 
camping out all summer long.” 

“Y-yes,” stammered little Purdick, “but — but where 
do I come in?” 

Larry laughed uproariously, in a fashion that Old 
Sheddon had taught him. 


192 


DICK AND LARRY : FRESHMEN 


“By the door of the cooking fire, if anybody should ask 
you. The minute Uncle Billy said 'a couple of your class- 
mates’ Dick grabbed for you. So, any time you get sore 
at us, you can square things by starving us to death. 
Neither Dick nor I could cook a decent meal, not if our 
lives depended on it. And, oh, boy ! when you came back 
after a summer in our good old mountains, your best 
friend won’t know you. If we don’t put some meat on 
those little old rat’s bones of yours it’ll be the queerest 
thing that ever happened, in the Hophras or out of ’em. 
Come on and let’s get your trunk out. We catch the five- 
o’clock Limited in the morning. For, of course, you are 
going with us?” 

“Going?” said little Purdick, and his pale blue eyes 
were shining; “I’d crawl on my hands and knees all the 
way to Colorado to get the chance to go 1” Then : “Oh, 
gosh, Larry! a whole summer out of doors: you don’t 
know what that means to me. If — if you’ll just haul off 
and give me a swift kick, so that I’ll know I’m not asleep 
and dreaming ” 

“I know,” Larry laughed. “That was just the way I 
felt when Uncle Billy fired it at Dick and me over yonder 
in the hotel. But it’s all wool and a yard wide. We go 
and you go. Now get to work on that trunk or it’ll be 
midnight before we can begin to cork it orf in our 
’ammicks. For it’s Westward Ho! with a rumbelow, 
and — and — oh, shucks ! I never can remember the rest of 
it. Get busy and pack !” 










